To the guy in the pimp suit, she said, “You are aware that the seventies ended when the seventies ended, right? I mean, I didn’t even know that shade of purple existed.”
Pimp Boy went all vampy on her and jumped. Buffy dodged the attack pretty easily, considering he may as well have announced it, and then punched him in the face. He ducked a second punch, and then a swipe with her stake.
“Crazy lady said I’d go to pieces for a blond girl in the moonlight,” the vampire was muttering. “Son of a bitch.”
They went at it for a few more seconds, Buffy having no clue what he was talking about and not caring all that much. The fight took them out into the cemetery. Buffy managed to bounce his face off a headstone, and he managed to kick her right into one of the trees.
Spike, meanwhile, was just standing there in the doorway to the crypt.
“The hell’s wrong with you, honky? Why you just standin’ there? She the Slayer, fool!”
Buffy was wondering much the same thing, but not for the reasons Pimp Boy was thinking. He lunged at her with a punch, which she deflected; then she spun around and delivered a spinning hook kick to the back of his neck, knocking him to the grass-covered ground. Pulling out her stake, she went to stab him with it, but he blocked it with his arm and then socked her in the temple, sending her reeling.
She stumbled back a bit, temporarily dizzied from the blow. Turning to Spike, who was standing in the doorway with his arms folded, she said, “Little help here?”
“Wasn’t aware you needed it,” Spike said with a smile.
Pimp Boy had gotten to his feet now. “Help?” He looked at Spike. “You helpin’ the Slayer? The hell kinda traitor are you?”
“Things change, mate,” Spike said.
Buffy smiled. “Except for you, apparently.” With that, she stepped one leg behind the other and delivered a side kick to Pimp Boy’s stomach, doubling him over. Then she lunged for his chest with her stake.
He was dust a second later.
Pocketing her stake, Buffy turned to Spike, who hadn’t moved a single undead muscle. “Did you know this reject from Shaft?”
Spike shrugged. “A loose end from a long time ago. Not worth getting worked up over.”
“So what was he doing here?”
“What,” Spike said defensively, “I’m not allowed to have visitors besides you or your precious Scooby gang? I’ve got a life, you know.”
“And that life includes fun meetings with fashion-free vampires?”
Holding up his arms in a what-do-you-want-from-me gesture, Spike said, “You didn’t see me stopping you from dusting the wanker, now, did you?”
“Didn’t see you helping me, either.” Even as she spoke, Buffy wondered why she was being so defensive. It wasn’t as if she needed the help.
“You didn’t ask,” Spike said, “and I didn’t think you needed the help.”
Buffy shuddered. Great, now we’re thinking alike.
Spike went on, “He’s just some vampire I knew from the old days, came by to look me up. I was ready to toss him out on his ear when you showed up.”
“You said he was a loose end—from what?”
“Just a scrap I got into back in the day.”
Again Buffy shuddered. Pimp Boy was dressed in vintage seventies wear. Buffy didn’t know all of Spike’s history, but she knew what he was doing in 1977, when those fashions were at the height of their inexplicable popularity. Did that guy help Spike kill that Slayer in New York? Were they planning ways of killing me?
No, Buffy realized, that was ridiculous. Spike had made his love for Buffy all too clear, to the point where he’d risked everything to save Dawn. Whatever he’d done in the past was in the past.
Kinda like that guy I just dusted.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice.
“Well, that’s a first,” Spike said with a snort. “Nothin’ to apologize for, pet. Honestly, you did me a favor. Like I told Leroy before you arrived, only reason he’s still alive was ’cause of an oversight on my part. You went and rectified that for me.”
Allowing herself a smirk, she said, “In that case, I’d like to claim my reward.”
Spike’s grin was much wider—and much more greedy. “We aim to please, baby.”
She went into the crypt, wondering if making love to Spike—no, screwing Spike, what they were doing had very little to do with love, at least from her point of view—after a fight might make things better.
Somehow, she doubted it, but she went ahead inside anyhow.
He killed a Slayer twice before. I’ve been dead twice before. He once told me that all Slayers have a death wish, which makes me wonder if that’s what keeps me coming back. We have death to share.
However, Buffy voiced none of these thoughts as she grabbed Spike and kissed him with a violence that was borne of both intensity and desire.
Spike closed the crypt door. . . .
* * *
Robin Wood was greeted by the young woman behind the desk as he entered the hotel. “Can I help you, sir?”
Putting on his best smile, Robin said, “Yes, I have a reservation, name of Wood.”
“Can I see some ID, please, sir?”
Nodding, Robin reached into his back pocket and pulled his California driver’s license out of his wallet, as well as his credit card. He’d learned to drive as a teenager in Beverly Hills, where he’d been raised by his adoptive father, Bernard Crowley. Bernard had been a good and kind father, always giving Robin the best of everything.
It wasn’t until Bernard was on his deathbed that he told Robin the truth.
The story interrupted regularly by the horrible coughing fits that had characterized his losing battle with lung cancer, Bernard had told the twenty-one-year-old Robin everything about his first four years, about his mother, Nikki, her calling, her duty, and her vicious end at the hands of a vampire. All the martial arts work—Bernard was a third-degree black belt in seido karate, and he had been training Robin for as long as the young man could remember—had finally made sense at that point. Bernard had also told him about the Watchers Council and Bernard’s own departure from same. And he had shown Robin the bag that was now the only keepsake he had of his mother.
Suddenly, several shards of memory that had always confused Robin had come into focus. He’d visited New York twice when he was in college and had been struck by parts that seemed eerily familiar despite his not remembering ever visiting the city. Now he realized the truth—he hadn’t visited, he’d lived there. According to the therapist he’d been seeing for the past few years, the trauma of his mother’s death had caused him to repress a great deal of his life prior to the age of four, but working with her had brought most of it back.
The one thing Bernard had refused to share was the name of the vampire who had killed his mother. “You cannot fight him,” Bernard had said between coughs. “He is eternal, and you are mortal. I have trained you so you can contribute to the fight against evil, Robin, but revenge is not the way.”
Of course, Robin hadn’t paid a lick of attention to that advice and had spent most of his twenties trying and failing to track down the vampire who killed his mother. He had also learned quite a bit about Slayers. He had heard about Hemery High School in Los Angeles being the site of an attack, only to discover that the gym had been burned down by a young blond woman—the newest Slayer. Robin had lost track of her for a while, eventually learning of her presence in the nearby suburb of Sunnydale.
But as he had gotten older—and spent his days as a teacher, quickly moving up the ladder to administrator—he had grown wiser, and had soon come to the realization that he was not yet ready for the big fights.
The clerk handed him his credit card and license back. “Are you in town for business or pleasure, Mr. Wood?”
“A job interview, actually,” he said. “They’re rebuilding the high school, and I’ve applied to be the new principal.”
“Really?” The clerk barked a laugh. �
�You’re a little young, aren’t you?”
“To be principal?” he asked with a grin.
“To be that stupid. You know what happened to the last two principals?”
“I heard,” Robin said. “That’s why I feel good about my chances. I hear I’m the only applicant.”
Robin still wasn’t sure if he was ready to join the fight that Bernard had trained him for, but he also was unable to pass up the opportunity when word went out that the new Sunnydale High was looking for a principal. Robin had much less experience than other candidates, but other candidates were shying away from the opportunity. The last two principals, after all, had been eaten.
But Robin also knew that Sunnydale High was located right on a Hellmouth. And that meant he’d be right in place to do the best he could to help the fight against evil.
The clerk ran a room key through the card reader, placed it in a piece of cardboard on which she wrote a number, and handed it to Robin. “Your room number is on the envelope, Mr. Wood. Enjoy your stay—and good luck on the interview!”
Smiling, Robin said, “Thanks.” Picking up his garment bag and duffel, he walked over to the elevators, anticipating very little sleep. He always suffered insomnia before a job interview, and this one promised much more excitement than most.
Maybe I’ll get to help the Slayer out. Wouldn’t that make Mama proud?
Historian’s Note
The author has endeavored to portray the New York City of 1977—which he remembers fondly from his childhood—as accurately as possible. The “Son of Sam” murders were indeed an ongoing concern, as David Berkowitz had gone a year without being caught, or even identified, as of July 1977, despite the best efforts of the New York Police Department’s Operation Omega task force. In addition, the city was in fact in the midst of a brutal fiscal crisis; the NYPD union was in ugly negotiations with the city; Mayor Abe Beame’s work-release program was a source of controversy; six people were running against Beame for mayor (the victory eventually went to Ed Koch, who would serve three terms; another of the candidates, Mario Cuomo, would go on to become a beloved governor of the state); the New York Yankees were in the midst of a pennant race (they would go on to win the World Series, the team’s first Series victory in fifteen years); the city had almost torn down Grand Central Terminal, though that was averted, not by the Slayer, but by Jackie Kennedy Onassis; Columbus Circle was home to the now long-demolished New York Coliseum; and Times Square was a haven of peep shows, pornography, prositution, and low-rent movie theaters, its Disney-fication still two decades in the future. And, of course, there really was a blackout that commenced at 8:37 p.m. on the 13th of July, one that lasted for twenty-five hours and saw the city gripped by riots, looting, vandalism, and fires.
In some cases, the author has taken liberties for the purposes of the story. For example, while all attempts have been made to capture the spirit of CBGB’s in its heyday, there is, in fact, no such band as Apple Corpse, and, while the Ramones were a fixture at CBGB’s in the late 1970s, they didn’t actually play the club on the weekend of the 8th of July (the punk weekend referred to did happen, but it was hosted by the Cramps).
Any other mistakes, flubs, or inaccuracies should be blamed entirely on the author, to whom you can e-mail your raspberries at [email protected].
Finally, the prologue and epilogue take place shortly prior to the sixth-season Buffy episode “Double-meat Palace.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This is Keith R. A. DeCandido’s third Buffy book: He also helped put together the first edition of The Watchers Guide in 1998 and wrote the 1999 novelization The Xander Years, Volume 1. As a native New Yorker, having grown up there in the 1970s, he found the character of Nikki Wood appealing from the moment he first saw her and Spike duking it out on the subway in “Fool for Love,” and so is thrilled to have been given the chance to write Blackout. Keith’s other fiction has taken him to the media universes of Star Trek (in all its incarnations, plus some new ones), Spider-Man, Farscape, Doctor Who, Xena, Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, Young Hercules, and, most recently, novels based on the video games World of Warcraft (Cycle of Hatred) and Starcraft: Ghost (Nova). His original novel Dragon Precinct was published in 2004, he novelized the Joss Whedon film Serenity in 2005, and he’s also edited several anthologies. In what he jokingly refers to as his spare time, Keith plays percussion, practices kenshikai karate, and follows his beloved New York Yankees. He still lives in New York City with his girlfriend and two lunatic cats. Find out more insanity at his official website, DeCandido.net.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Library of Congress Control Number 2006925242
ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-1917-9
ISBN-10: 1-4169-1917-1
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