by Ray Garton
“Buffy!” Giles shouted. He lifted one of the fat, heavy books on the table before him and threw it down hard on the tabletop. It made a thunderous sound that was followed by Giles’s angry cry: “Buffy, stop it!”
Buffy froze. Her fist was over her head, ready to strike again. She slowly lifted her head and looked up at Giles, her face a mask of pure murderous hatred. Her fist lowered very slowly and Giles went to her, pulled her to her feet, and led her around the table and away from Willow.
Oz knelt beside Willow, who was coughing and gagging as she gulped in deep breaths, dazed but conscious, bleeding but not seriously injured. After a moment of staring up at him with wide, confused eyes, Willow’s face pulled together in an angry sneer as she sat up and growled, “Where is she?”
“Hey, hey, why don’t you leave the wrestling to the professional fakers, huh?” Oz said as he pushed her back down to the floor.
Giles took Buffy to a chair and pushed down on her shoulders until she finally lowered herself into it. Her eyes looked at nothing in particular, as if she didn’t even notice him there, and she whispered something to herself repeatedly, something Giles couldn’t quite make out. At first, it sounded like she was saying, “killer . . . killer . . . killer,” but when he leaned forward, Giles heard her words clearly:
“. . . her . . . kill her . . . kill her . . . kill . . .”
“Buffy,” Giles said, kneeling in front of her. He clutched her shoulders and shook her hard. “Buffy, listen to me, look at me, Buffy!” Her eyes slowly made their way to his. “Buffy, it’s the Rakshasa. It has to be. They’ve done this to you, they’ve gotten to you.” He continued shaking her, making her head flop forward and back. “Whatever’s going through your head right now, you must fight it! Reject it, Buffy! Do you hear me? Buffy? Do you hear me?”
Confusion and anger bled from her face and her eyes widened slowly, darted around frantically, until settling on Giles.
“Giles, I . . .” She winced and touched her forehead gingerly with four fingertips. A sizable lump was developing.
“One of my books claims that the very presence of the Rakshasa can adversely effect people in the surrounding area. Their personalities, their behavior,” Giles said.
Buffy covered her forehead with her whole hand and closed her eyes.
Giles continued: “I’m certain that is what happened to you and Willow. It was the —”
“Oh, my God,” she interrupted, speaking the words in a breath.
“What?”
“The nightmares.”
Giles frowned. “What nightmares?”
“I’ve been having nightmares. Except . . .” She shook her head slowly, wincing again at the pain in her head. “I don’t think they were nightmares at all.”
“Willow mentioned something about having nightmares.” His frown deepened as he turned his head away and muttered to himself, “Why didn’t I listen?”
“Willow.” Buffy stood, unsteady at first, then stepped forward.
Giles put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. “Are you all right now, Buffy?”
“I can still feel it,” she whispered. “Not as strong as before, now that I know what it is, but . . . it’s still there.” She made her way quickly around the table.
Oz and Xander were kneeling on either side of Willow, holding her down. She was struggling and saying something through clenched teeth. Buffy knelt down next to Xander. Willow’s right eye was wide, almost crazed, but her left eye was puffy with swelling and turning the color of a banana going bad. She was growling hatefully, “Kill ’er, kill ’er,” over and over, condensing it into one word.
Buffy leaned over Willow and said, “I’m sorry, Willow, I —”
Willow became even more enraged and spittle flew from her mouth as she repeated the two words louder, spitting them at Buffy. Xander and Oz were finding it difficult to hold her down as her body bucked and her legs kicked.
“Willow, listen to me,” Buffy said, leaning closer. “This is not you! It’s the Rakshasa, they’ve . . . they’ve . . .” She stood suddenly and looked around at the surrounding darkness in the library. Stepping away from Willow, Buffy listened closely to the darkness.
Something . . . movement? The quiet, coarse sound of something being dragged over the carpet?
“Buffy, what is it?” Giles asked.
Her posture stiffened and both fists clenched at her side as she recognized another sound: the sibilant, whispering voices she’d heard in her nightmares. Staring into the darkness she said, “The Rakshasa. They’re here with us. Right now.”
Buffy walked to the edge of the light, paused, and continued into the darkness. She passed an aisle of books, and another, a third. Buffy stopped. Peered into the deepening darkness of the fourth aisle. Something was at the other end of the aisle, deep in the darkness where she couldn’t see. It moved.
“Somebody turn on the far lights!” Buffy called as she reached beneath her coat and removed the stake she’d taken earlier, in the street, from Giles.
The movement grew closer, louder. Something was running through the dark toward her, something that made a wet, panting sound, almost like forced laughter.
“The lights, over in the far corner!” Buffy shouted.
Fluorescent lights flickered on as a dwarf-size creature with red eyes, razor fangs in a lizard’s snout, and a fleshy pink tail released an earsplitting shriek as it jumped for Buffy’s throat.
Chapter 15
BUFFY PLUNGED THE STAKE INTO THE CREATURE’S small, round, gray-skinned belly. Its small red eyes bulged as its snout opened wide. A black, narrow, forked tongue fluttered between two curved rows of small shiny fangs as it screamed in pain. Its breath was a foul mixture of fecal matter and rotting meat.
She shook the thing off the stake and it fell to the floor facedown, its pink, ratlike tail swiping back and forth furiously.
Buffy looked around for more, but turned her attention back to the floor when the creature rolled over and hopped to its feet. A viscous, yellowish-green substance dribbled from the hole made by the stake, but not for long. The hole made a sucking sound, pulling the slime back in, then closed up and disappeared, as if it had never been there.
She didn’t wait for it to make another move; she kicked it in the belly and watched it roll clumsily back down the aisle. Buffy followed it, caught up with it, and stomped a foot on it.
Vampires have spoiled me, she thought as she got down on one knee, took her foot off the creature, held it down with one hand, and stabbed it repeatedly. The Rakshasa did not disappear in an explosion of dust, which was what Buffy had grown accustomed to in dealing with vampires. She wasn’t even sure if they died, but she didn’t stop to find out. She continued stabbing the small, vile creature with the stake until it stopped squirming and kicking its short, stubby legs. With the stake poised to strike again if necessary, Buffy watched the creature.
It decomposed rapidly, seeming to melt into a thick puddle of yellowish-green goo that made wet, sticky sounds as it spread over the floor. Before it was finished settling, the substance began to evaporate, as if it were being sucked into the floor. In a moment, it was gone, leaving only a faint, vaguely unpleasant-smelling stain on the carpet.
Giles shouted, “Buffy, above you!”
She tilted her head back and saw one of the red-eyed creatures glaring down at her from atop a bookshelf. It jumped.
Buffy tucked in her chin and rolled forward over the floor and shot to her feet as the Rakshasa landed behind her. Clutching the stake, she spun around, ready to stab the creature as many times as it took to kill it. But it was not one of the dwarfish, lizard-faced things she saw when she turned.
“Hello, Buffy,” Angel said. He wore black jeans and no shirt, and he smiled at her warmly.
“That’s not Angel, Buffy,” Giles said. He stood several feet behind the thing. “I saw it change in mid-air.”
“I know,” Buffy said quietly, still looking into those beautiful deep-brown eyes. “Y
ou’ve been coming to my bedroom at night, haven’t you?” she whispered to the creature. “Whispering to me in the dark. Telling me to kill my best friend. Haven’t you?”
“I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about, Buff,” he said, frowning.
It was a perfect duplicate of Angel; the hair, the muscles, the eyes. There was probably a tattoo on his back. She knew if she touched the skin, it would feel exactly like Angel. It might even smell like Angel. But it wasn’t — and she had to keep telling herself that inside, again and again — as she pounded the stake into his flat stomach.
Angel’s body shimmered like the surface of a pond and quickly melted into what it really was: a short, fanged Rakshasa. Buffy pounced on it and began stabbing it repeatedly with rapid swings of her right arm as she held it down with her left.
The Rakshasa’s snout closed on her left forearm, burying its small fangs into her flesh. Buffy screamed in pain, but didn’t miss a beat with the stake; she just changed the location of her stabs and drove it into the creature’s left eye, and kept driving it in there.
The creature squealed as its viscous fluids splashed over the floor and onto Buffy with each strike. Its squeal became a gurgle as its body liquefied and spread over the floor, then seemed to be sucked up into nothingness.
The second the Rakshasa dissolved, Willow stopped struggling with Oz and Xander. Her brow furrowed above wide eyes that darted back and forth between the two faces hovering over her. Her stiff body slowly relaxed, and in return, the boys relaxed their hold on her.
“Willow?” Oz asked cautiously.
“What happened?” she asked in a coarse whisper.
Oz and Xander looked at one another, then back at Willow.
Xander said, “Um, you, uh . . . tripped over the ottoman?”
“We’re not quite sure,” Oz said, ignoring Xander’s response.
Willow sat up and gently touched her face, then looked at her fingertips. “I’m bleeding!” she exclaimed. She looked at Oz and asked, “Why am I bleeding?”
“Also unclear,” Oz stammered, glancing at Xander for help.
Before Xander could speak up to help Oz, Buffy joined them.
“Are you all right, Willow?” she asked, wincing as she looked at her friend’s bruises. She hunkered down in front of Willow, and without taking her eyes from the wounds on her friend’s face, she said, “Xander, or Giles, or somebody . . . get some alcohol and some ice.”
“Get enough for both of them,” Giles added. “You’re bleeding, Buffy. That should be dressed immediately.”
As Xander headed for the office, Buffy said, “I am so sorry, Willow.”
“You’re sorry?” Willow asked. “For what?”
“You don’t remember what happened?”
“Last I can remember, we were talking about Ravana and the Rakshasa. Next thing I know, I’m on the floor with a headache, and I’m bleeding. Is my lip cut?”
“Willow, have you been having nightmares?” Buffy asked.
Willow frowned. “Well, yeah. One nightmare over and over. Why?”
“Do you hear voices whispering to you in the nightmare? And when you wake up, you feel angry and tense but at the same time really, really good, like all the problems in your life have been solved, but you can’t remember exactly what the voices were telling you?”
She frowned even more, sat up straighter. “Yeah. But how do you know?”
“I’ve been having the same nightmare. But they aren’t nightmares.”
Xander returned with some ice in a plastic bag and a white tin box with a red cross on the lid. He handed them to Buffy, then turned to Oz, who was standing nearby with the fingers of both hands stuffed into his back pockets.
“Do you know what they’re talking about?” Xander whispered.
Oz said nothing, didn’t even glance at Xander.
“Do you see red eyes in your nightmares?”
Willow nodded, looking very concerned now.
“Me, too. The Rakshasa. They come to our rooms at night and whisper to us. Maybe they put us in some kind of trance or something, I don’t know, but it’s not a nightmare. They’ve been telling us to kill each other.”
“What?” Willow breathed.
Buffy opened the tin box, put some alcohol on a cottonball, and dabbed Willow’s face with it. Willow hissed at the stinging pain, then gently held the bag of ice to her cheek. “Oh, my God,” she said.
“What?” Buffy asked.
Willow shook her head, closed her eyes a moment. “It . . . it just came back to me. What happened. In here, I mean. Just now, between us.”
“It wasn’t us, though,” Buffy said. “It was them. They wanted one of us to kill the other. Then the survivor would be dinner. Their dinner.”
“But, how could we not know?” Willow asked.
Giles said, “We all have dreams that we forget upon waking, but those dreams are still with us, in our subconscious. They come from the subconscious. I suspect it was to your subconscious that these creatures were speaking, so that you would have no conscious memory of their visitations. Just a cloudy, dreamlike recollection.”
Willow turned to Buffy. “Um . . . thank you for not taking my head off and pulling my spleen out through my neck-stump. I know you could have if you’d wanted.”
“I probably would have if Giles hadn’t stopped me.” When finished treating Willow’s wounds, Buffy sat in a chair and Giles started cleaning and bandaging her injured forearm.
“This is precisely what the Rakshasa have been doing all over town,” Giles said. “They have been working people up into a hateful frenzy, inspiring people to kill their friends. For all we know, it’s happening somewhere right now.”
Buffy said, “Giles, you mentioned something you read in one of your books. You said the presence of the Rakshasa alone affects the personalities and behavior of people in the surrounding area.”
“Yes,” Giles said with a nod.
“Well, it’s not just people. All the vampires in town have their panties in a bunch, and I bet that’s why. It’s worse than a Marilyn Manson concert out there.”
“Yet another reason for us to stop this before it goes any farther,” Giles said. “Willow, I need more details from you. We must get to work on stopping this now before more people are killed.”
“And eaten,” Buffy muttered, her arm wrapped neatly in crisp gauze.
Willow stood slowly, made her way carefully to the table, and took a seat. The others joined her as she reached for her bag and pulled out several sheets of paper that had been folded over once. “Here,” Willow said, handing the papers to Giles. Her voice was still hoarse. “I printed them up off the Internet.” She turned to Oz, who sat beside her. “Could you please get me a glass of water?”
Oz was gone immediately and returned seconds later with a paper cup of water.
Willow took a few sips, cleared her throat, winced, then drank some more. “Why would anyone want to raise something like that? I mean, there doesn’t seem to be anything to gain from Ravana coming back and turning the whole world into his own personal hellhole. Who would do such a thing?”
“I’m afraid I might have some idea,” Giles said as his eyes scanned the pages for a moment. He set them down and looked at the others. “I ran into Ethan Rayne in the grocery store tonight.”
“Rayne?” Buffy asked. “What’s he doing in Sunnydale?” She picked up the sheets Willow had printed and flipped through them, stopping on the grainy photograph of the Ravana statuette and the six Rakshasa.
“The very question I asked him. He said he was just passing through. I don’t believe him, of course. But neither can I imagine any reason he would have for resurrecting an ancient Hindu demon. He does nothing that doesn’t benefit him directly.”
“That’s an odd image,” Xander said, frowning. “Ethan Rayne in a grocery store. He was actually shopping for groceries?”
“Yes, it was odd. For one thing, he told me he’d fallen in love just before walk
ing away. As for groceries . . . he seemed interested in nothing more than bottled water. He took two bottles of distilled water from the shelf. As far as I know, that was all.”
Willow covered her mouth as she yawned, and groaned at the pain the motion caused her. A couple seconds later, Xander yawned as well.
“It’s much too late for this,” Giles said. “I’ll take you all home and we can continue tomorrow. We all need our sleep.”
“What about the nightmare?” Willow asked. “I mean, we know that it’s not a nightmare now, but that doesn’t mean those things won’t be back again tonight.”
“I wish I could tell you some way to hold them off,” he said, shrugging helplessly. “If such a thing exists, I don’t know what it is. Yet.”
“We’re on to them now, Willow,” Buffy said. “We’ll just have to be prepared. Lock your bedroom door and windows. Sleep with all the lights on so they can’t hide in the dark. And if they do show up . . .” she trailed off. She had nothing left to offer.
Giles stood with a sigh. “It’s very late. Shall we go?”
When Buffy got home, her mother was in bed and the house was dark and silent. Buffy hadn’t eaten any dinner and was famished, but by the time she entered the house, she was much too tired to even think of eating. After going through the house to make sure every door and window was locked, she went to her bedroom.
Buffy closed and locked her bedroom door, then checked the locks on both windows. Out of her clothes in seconds, she slipped on a long nightshirt that had the kids from South Park on the front. With the overhead light still on, she got into bed, turned on the bedside lamp, and made sure her alarm was set. She snuggled under the covers and rolled onto her side, away from the light. But she knew even the light wouldn’t keep her awake.
If anything could keep her from surrendering to her fatigue, it would be tightening knot in her stomach. It had relaxed somewhat once things had settled down in the library, but it was back now, bigger and harder, deep in the middle of her gut, a hardening lump of worry and anger and fear.