by Ray Garton
Buffy hated the machine instantly. It gave her the creeps. Of course, all convenience stores gave Buffy the creeps. The unnatural light with its grating, gnatlike hum, and the shelves of junk food . . . fake food, filled with all kinds of chemicals and preservatives, stuff that would survive a nuclear war without even glowing. Buffy saw something sinister in their cases of fake drinks with fake sweeteners and fruit slooshies in cups the size of milk buckets.
Maybe it was just so normal she found it jarring. Buffy hadn’t been on very good terms with “normal” in a long time.
She grabbed a bottle of diet cola, a package of Twinkies, despite all their accompanying chemicals and carcinogens, and went to the counter.
The pinball demon in the corner roared with laughter.
The clerk did not move when Buffy put the soda and Twinkies on the counter. He remained staring down at the magazine, the top of his head covered by a red uniform cap with a yellow bill. His hands were palm-down on the magazine.
Buffy reached over and nudged his arm.
The clerk slowly slumped forward and Buffy pulled her hand back just before his head clunked onto the counter. The red cap came off, tumbled over the counter and dropped to Buffy’s feet. The clerk landed facedown, and when Buffy leaned forward slightly, she could see the ragged fang marks in his neck.
The demonic laughter stopped. The pinball machine did not ring or buzz or play any explosive sound effects.
Buffy turned just as the vampire in the long black coat reached her, clamped a hand on to her neck and pressed his thumb into her throat. He smelled of mud and decay. She crushed his nose with the soda bottle in her hand; it hit the vampire’s face so hard that the glass, thick as it was, shattered and cola sprayed in all directions. With a sharp movement of her forearm, Buffy fractured his elbow with a loud crack and bent it backward. The vampire did not make a sound, but it loosened its grip on her throat.
Her fists closed over the lapels of the black coat and she swung the vampire around hard. He crashed into the counter and she pushed him onto his back. The clerk’s body slid backward and dropped to the floor in a heap on the other side of the counter. Buffy reached under her jacket for a stake.
There were no stakes.
She punched the vampire in the face a few times when he tried to sit up, setting off his broken nose. It just pissed him off.
There was a cup by the cash register stuffed with pens and pencils and a couple fat magic markers. She pressed her right hand to the vampire’s chest and reached for the cup with her left.
The vampire knocked her right arm away and clutched her left elbow.
Buffy closed her hand on something — a pen, a pencil, she couldn’t tell — just as the vampire bent a knee back to his chest and slammed his foot into Buffy’s chest and kicked outward. Her feet left the floor for an instant and she crashed into a lottery scratcher machine. She grabbed the magazine rack to keep from falling, but he was on her before she could recover fully.
He hauled Buffy up by her jacket and slammed her hard against the scratcher machine, pressing his body against hers. Her left hand was pinned between them, so even if she was lucky enough to have grabbed a wooden pencil, she couldn’t use it.
Buffy did two things almost simultaneously. She smacked her forehead into the vampire’s forehead, shot a knee between his, curled her leg around his, and twisted powerfully. When his head dropped back in response to her headbutt, and his body started to twist away from her, Buffy raised her left arm and brought it down fast, without even looking to see what she held in her fist.
The tip of the Number 2 pencil snapped at first when it hit his shirt, but the rest of the pencil went in, anyway.
The vampire collapsed in a cloud of dust and disappeared just before landing on the Weekly World News rack, where headlines warned New York City of a coming ratboy invasion.
How did I lose track of the number of stakes I had? Buffy wondered, angry at herself. She pushed the glass door open hard as she hurried out of the store, thinking out loud. “Shit! How could I not have any stakes?”
“What took you so long?” Angel asked. He was standing by the ice freezer, swallowed in shadows.
“Vampire,” she said, picking up her pace. He joined her and they started across the small parking lot. “They’re getting their food at convenience stores now. If this keeps up, they’ll be running for political office by Monday. And I can’t believe I’m out of stakes! What kind of brain-freeze was that?”
They were on the sidewalk, putting the store behind them.
“You’re bound to use them up faster than usual with all this activity,“ Angel said. “And with all this activity, it’s not a good idea to be without stakes.”
Before Buffy could respond, she saw headlights up ahead, growing closer, and heard an engine get louder. It was the same gleaming white limousine she’d seen the night before.
The back window on the passenger’s side lowered slowly. The black glass peeled back over a long dead-white face wearing silver-rimmed reflective sunglasses. The face seemed to hover there without a body, or even a full skull . . . just the face, held up by the thick darkness inside the car. Hidden eyes latched onto them and the face turned to watch them as the limousine passed.
Then it was gone. But Buffy and Angel stared after it.
“You seen that limo around here before?” Buffy asked.
“No. You?”
“Yeah. That guy, did he look at all suspicious to you?”
“He looked dead.”
“That’s suspicious in my book.” Buffy started walking again, but stopped abruptly. “Wait, where are we? What’s closer, my place or the school?”
“We’re closer to the school,” Angel said. “You think Giles will be there this late?”
“What, you think he goes out dancing, or has a social life or something?” She turned around, took Angel’s hand, and started walking. “C’mon, let’s go see.”
By the time Buffy and Angel headed for the school library, Giles had already left.
Even Watchers had to eat, and that meant an occasional trip to the grocery store. Giles shopped when it occurred to him or whenever the refrigerator yawned emptily at him like a cold, white coffin, whichever came first. Sometimes that meant shopping late at night, while most people were home watching the local news. Fortunately, there was a twenty-four-hour supersize grocery store in town that fit his erratic schedule perfectly. The only thing Giles didn’t like about the store was the way the clerks asked you if you had a club card. They pushed it aggressively and were always trying to get him to sign up for one. Giles never did. He’d have to show his card each time he bought groceries and it would be a nuisance, like some kind of ridiculous scene from an old World War II movie, with Nazis asking to see his papers.
Ven ve see zat your pay-pers are in order, Mr. Giles, ve vill release you. Or . . . mebbe not! Heh-heh.
Giles sighed and shook his head. He was doing a German accent in his head. He decided he was tired.
The right front wheel of Giles’s grocery cart kept trying to lead him in the wrong direction as he pushed it up one aisle and down the next. He had no list, although he knew he was out of milk and bread, which usually meant he’d be needing everything else, too.
Giles rounded a corner a little too fast and collided with another cart.
“I beg your pardon!” he exclaimed, pulling his cart back.
The other cart was being pushed by a beautiful red-haired woman, tall, about Giles’s age. She pushed the cart around his and came up beside him in the opposite direction. She paused as she smiled and looked directly into his eyes. “No problem at all,” she said, and he could hear the smile echoing in her voice.
Giles did a double take as he pushed his cart forward, because she was still looking at him, still smiling. He almost flinched, but then took a moment to return the look and the smile before moving on. He kept smiling for a while, though; it felt good to know he still had a bit of . . . something in him.
He was openly flirting with total strangers. Giles decided he was much more tired than he’d thought.
Although he did all his grocery shopping at that particular store, Giles was never able to find everything he wanted. Each time he came, he couldn’t be more lost if the store changed its layout daily. His mind was always on other things, in other places. Worrying about Buffy, more often than not.
Giles turned down an aisle and spotted the back of a man leaving the aisle at the other end. Something about the figure, or perhaps the movement, had looked familiar enough to make Giles frown. It looked like the man was wearing a very expensive Italian suit. Giles took a can of coffee from the shelf, put it in his cart, and followed the faceless man.
He turned right at the end of the aisle. The man was up ahead, a couple aisles along. He passed the meats and seafood before turning down another aisle. The walk, the rigid posture . . . it was too familiar.
He stopped in his tracks and shivered involuntarily. What was Ethan Rayne doing in Sunnydale? Nothing good, no doubt, but what?
Giles turned down the same aisle. Rayne was up ahead, perusing the shelves of bottled water. Was he stocking up for something?
Giles had found in his line of work that there were moments when he wanted to claw at his hair and scream at the top of his lungs, “Everybody freeze and nobody move until I’ve figured out what the hell is going on here!”
This was one of those moments. First mutant hellhounds and slain cattle eaten to the bone, then people killing each other and getting eaten, the Rakshasa, not to mention some rather odd behavior from Buffy and Willow, who had always been such close friends, and now Ethan Rayne, dressed to kill and buying bottled water shortly before midnight. And that suit — it must have had a formidable price tag. Rayne was a sharp dresser, but certainly not rich. At least he hadn’t been the last time Giles had seen him.
Rayne turned to him and smiled, as if he’d known Giles was there all along. “How very domestic of you, Ripper. Shopping for groceries.”
Giles did not return the smile; his lips remained a straight, tense line until he spoke. “What brings you to Sunnydale, Ethan?” he asked very quietly, using his deadly serious tone of voice to cover his underlying concern. The two men had known each other long enough for Ethan to respond to the tone as well as the words.
“Nothing. Just passing through,” Ethan replied smugly. He went on scanning the shelves of bottled water, almost as if Giles had walked away. “This just happened to be a convenient place to stop.” He chose two bottles, turned to Giles with one in each hand, and smiled again. “You know how I feel about tap water. Especially in roadside motels.”
“I would think you could afford the very best of accommodations,” Giles said. “From the looks of you.” Giles sounded a bit distracted, because he was; there was something wrong with things, something more than Rayne’s mere presence. He looked at the plastic bottles Rayne held. His fingers were hooked through the handles and the label was tilted downward, so Giles couldn’t make out the brand name, but he could see it was distilled water.
Rayne tilted his head back a bit, evened his shoulders and said, “Yes, Giles, I’ve done quite well for myself, thank you.”
Giles’s eyes narrowed slowly. “And how have you managed that?”
Their eyes remained locked for a silent moment. Rayne was unsmiling, serious. “Love, Giles. That’s how.” A grin exploded on his face. “I fell in love.”
Giles stared at Rayne’s back as he walked away without another word. Ethan Rayne? In love? It was almost enough to make him laugh out loud. But he didn’t laugh because he was too busy wondering why Rayne had told him that. It didn’t make sense. And of course he wasn’t just passing through — Rayne didn’t just pass through anywhere.
He tried to conceive of a connection between Rayne and the Rakshasa, but reminded himself that he and the others did not know everything about the Rakshasa themselves yet. He needed to go home and start absorbing some of the information in his books.
Giles dumped the can of coffee and other items into a nearby pretzel display and headed for the door.
“Willow, what are you doing out so late?” Mila asked. Her apartment door was open a crack and she peered out between two chain locks. She had to raise her voice to be heard above the rain, which had started coming down in great sweeping sheets just a few minutes before.
“Oh, it’s not that late,” Willow said quietly. “Is it?” She stood on the covered, second-story concrete walkway, but it was too late for shelter from the rain to do any good because she was already wet from head to toe. The umbrella Willow carried had worked at first, but when the wind came along, it couldn’t protect her from the blowing downpour.
“I’m watching Politically Incorrect That’s late for a school night.” She closed the door and the chains rattled inside before the door opened again. “Come in, come in.” As she closed and locked the door behind Willow, she asked, “Is anything wrong?” She took Willow’s closed umbrella and leaned it beside the door.
“I just had to . . . I’m sorry for coming so late, but I . . . I just had to talk to someone. No, to you.”
“Come sit down.” Mila led her across the small living room to the sofa. “I was just having some tea. Can I get you some?”
“Oh, yes, please.”
“Did you walk here? You’re all wet.”
“It’s not that far from my house, really. It was only drizzly out when I left the house, but a couple minutes ago, I don’t know, a cloud ruptured, I guess, and it started to pour.”
“Go into the bathroom and get a towel, dry yourself off. First door on the left down the hall.”
It was a small apartment, but felt roomy in spite of its dimensions. A bar separated most of the kitchen from the living room, and as Mila went around it to get Willow’s tea, she gestured toward the hall to her left.
In the bathroom, Willow found a towel in the cupboard and scrubbed her hair dry. She dried her neck and arms and dabbed uselessly at her clothes. She took the towel with her when she left the bathroom . . . and she froze in the hall.
The door to the room across from the bathroom was wide open and a lamp glowed on a nightstand beside a queen-size bed. In the corner, on a stand all its own, stood a statue, four feet tall, maybe taller, but made to look even taller by the height of the stand beneath it.
Willow couldn’t make sense of the statue’s shape at first, and went to the open doorway to get a better look, then stepped inside the bedroom. The lamp didn’t give much light and the shadows in the corner were deep, but the statue appeared to be of some kind of tree, with branches oddly placed and curving in all directions. But the top part didn’t look right. She moved closer, squinting to make out details, to pull the shape together.
She stumbled to a halt when she made out the face, and straightened up with a quiet gasp. There was another face . . . and another . . .
Willow didn’t have to count them to know how many there were. It was no tree, and those weren’t branches.
A click from behind her bathed the room, and the ten-headed creature before her, in light, and the face looking directly at her with needle-fangs bared, looked about to stretch out and bite off a chunk of flesh from her body.
Willow screamed at the large statue of Ravana, and spun around.
“What’s wrong, Willow?” Mila asked with surprise, concern, and a little fear in her voice.
It felt as if somebody had dumped a bucket of icewater into Willow’s stomach, and the chill spread outward through her body. The statue didn’t mean anything, not a thing, but just the same, Willow wanted to jump out a window as fast as her mind jumped to conclusions.
“Are you all right?” Mila asked as she rushed toward Willow and reached out to put a hand on her shoulder.
Willow pulled her shoulder away as she took a step back. “Don’t touch me,” she breathed. She was surprised she’d said it out loud, but she was so frightened that she’d been unable to keep the tho
ught to herself.
Mila looked very worried. “Please tell me what’s wrong, Willow. What can I do? Should I call your parents?”
“Oh, no, that’s okay, I was just startled by the, um, statue.” She pointed a thumb over her shoulder. “I wasn’t snooping, or anything, I just —”
“Of course you weren’t,” Mila said with a little laugh. She was more at ease now. “Most people who pass my bedroom feel the need to come inside and inspect the statue.”
“Ravana,” Willow whispered as she turned around and looked at the monster.
“Yes, that’s right! How did you know?”
“I’ve been doing some reading.”
“It took my brother almost two years to complete it. He’s made many since then, most with far more intricate details. But this was his first, and he gave it to me. He likes to experiment on me,” she said, chuckling.
Willow turned to her again. “Have you ever heard of something called the Ravana statuette? It’s centuries old and comes with six smaller figures, the Rakshasa.”
Mila went to her bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. “Such statues are very common in India. You could probably find dozens like them in the markets. They’re everywhere.”
“Not this one.” Willow sighed and looked around the room. There were small statues on every shelf, even in the bookcase headboard.
“Tell me about it.”
She stopped pacing and faced Mila. “It’s supposed to be made of the bones of some of Ravana’s victims and it contains his essence.”
Mila frowned. “Are you serious?”
Willow bit her lower lip nervously. Either Mila was going to think she was crazy or she was going to want to get rid of her. She nodded.
An uncomfortable silence rose between them for a moment.