Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Carnival of Souls

by Nancy Holder

  “We need to erect a barrier!” Ms. Calendar spread her arms and began to chant. Giles recognized the structure, if not the precise vocabulary, of a Sumerian warding spell. He joined in, striving to reinforce it as best he could.

  The warding spell worked. The horde of attackers smashed into the invisible barrier Giles and Ms. Calendar had erected. Their monstrous faces contorted with rage; they balled their fists, claws, and talons and pummeled at the perimeter, roaring with fury.

  “Run out the back! We’ll try to hold them!” Giles said to Willow, standing with his legs wide apart and extending his arms. “Ta-mir-o! Baal! Cthulhu! Jezebel!”

  “Not him again!” Cordelia protested.

  “You don’t have the blade!” Ms. Calendar reminded him.

  “Yes, I do,” Giles said, yanking it out of his pocket.

  “Don’t call that Astorrith guy,” Cordelia begged him. “He’ll take out half of Sunnydale.”

  “Cordelia’s right, Rupert,” Ms. Calendar said. “It won’t help.”

  Giles thought a moment, then nodded his agreement; Ms. Calendar turned to Willow and said, “All right, then. Let’s proceed with the spell of destruction as fast as we can. Willow, you need to help us with this, good?”

  “Okay.” Willow licked her lips and took a deep breath as she looked anxiously at the horde of monsters pushing at the barrier. “I’m ready.”

  “We only have six prisms!” Vaclav protested.

  “We can’t wait any longer,” Giles replied. “Jenny, please, begin.”

  Ms. Calendar took a slow, cleansing breath. Then she began to speak in a low, authoritative voice, “In the name of the Goddess of Destruction, I order the beating heart of this demon to shatter!”

  She went on, and Vaclav held his breath as the young red-haired Willow joined in when Ms. Calendar invited her. Also Mr. Giles.

  “These chambers must sunder! Hear me, dark Lady, and break his heart, break it, make it shatter!”

  Vaclav’s mouth filled with bile as he pressed his fists against his mouth to keep from screaming.

  “Nothing’s happening!” Cordelia cried.

  The five looked at one another. Vaclav saw frustration on their faces. Also despair. And terror, and he knew they were mirrored on his own face.

  But he also saw a fine resolve settle over them. They were noble people, these friends of Angel’s. He could not be one of them—he had done too much evil—but he could help them.

  “So…we need all of them, right?” Cordelia said shrilly. “The prisms? And we’re missing the Ferris wheel one?”

  Just then, the barrier they had created…wobbled. Vaclav had no other word for it. It was weakening. He knew why.

  “The magicks are building,” he told them. “It is the Rising. The power of my master is at its zenith tonight! The dark forces gather. We are lost!”

  “Great,” Cordelia bit off. “So let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “I’m afraid we may no longer have that choice,” Giles said as he and Ms. Calendar moved toward the barrier. “Let’s try to keep it going,” he told her. “For as long as we can.”

  She nodded.

  “If we can’t leave, then someone needs to get the prism and bring it back here,” Willow said.

  Vaclav raised his hand. “Me. I’ll do it.” He was moved by their courage; he had been a part of evil for so long, he hadn’t thought there was any good left inside him. His love for Sandra and his admiration of these people—and Angel—had brought it forth. “I will do it,” Vaclav vowed, laying his hand over his heart. “Or die trying.”

  Giles hesitated.

  Cordelia huffed. “You can’t go,” Cordelia said to Giles. “You have to stay here and help with the ward. Same with Ms. Calendar. And Willow is your, like, magickal backup plus, please, she’d get, like, two feet before they slaughtered her. And I have a fear of heights. So. He’s our only hope.” She smiled grimly at him. “Since my guy bailed.”

  “We don’t know that,” Willow said. “He might have been killed.” She looked stricken. “I mean, he might be delayed.”

  “I can do it,” Vaclav insisted. “They haven’t come through the back way. If I go now, I might be able to get out.”

  “Go then,” Giles said softly. “And thank you.”

  Vaclav inclined his head. “I will not fail.”

  Then he raced out the exit.

  Ms. Calendar looked over her shoulder at Willow. “Willow, help me erect another ward at the exit. I’ll teach you the words.” She looked at her earnestly. “Can you do that?”

  Willow swallowed hard. “Um, yes, yes, I can.”

  Buffy kept squeezing Caligarius around the neck as the room flickered and shifted and changed and rearranged—from room to enormous, viscous internal body parts to room again. And as she squeezed, Caligarius grew; he was becoming the demon once more. She couldn’t let that happen; she didn’t understand what exactly was going on, but she knew she had to kill him as he was or…

  He shrank back down. Fighting to pull her off him, his gaze ticked anxiously from her to the calliope behind him.

  To the calliope behind him.

  She looked.

  The center of it was glowing a brilliant emerald green. It was pulsing rhythmically.

  Green steam was shooting from the pipes.

  No, not steam…green demon blood.

  It’s his heart, she thought.

  But it didn’t matter. She had no more oxygen; she was beginning to faint. She wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

  She was going to fail.

  And he knew it. An evil, triumphant smile spread across his face. His eyes glittered.

  “What now, proud one?” he taunted her.

  Now I’m going to die, Buffy the Vampire Slayer thought, beginning to let go. Mom, I’m so sorry. Willow, Xander, Giles…

  Vaclav flew like the wind blowing across the steppes of his native Bulgaria. The carnival had disintegrated into pandemonium; the patrons had awakened from the mesmerizing effect of the soulcatchers and the calliope. Now they were screaming hysterically and running in panic from Caligari’s minions. Vampires had joined the fray.

  Vaclav had to stop the carnage, end this here, now. He had lost Sandra—she was still one of them—but he could save Angel’s friends.

  He ran so fast he almost fell over his own feet. The carousel was glowing; the Tunnel of Love as well. Mr. Giles was right; when the prisms were taken, the rides that concealed them glowed with color.

  Since the Ferris wheel did not throw off any unusual hue, he could assume that Le Malfaiteur had failed in his duty.

  There was no longer a line of people waiting to get on, and no attendants overseeing the ride. All the carriages were empty, and still the wheel turned.

  With a mad dash, he hopped into a carriage as the wheel swooped downward. As it arced back up into the air, someone cried, “Vaclav!”

  Terrified, he looked back down at the ground. It was Madame Lazabra, surrounded by the freaks of the freak show. He had wondered where they had been. All he knew was that somehow Le Malfaiteur had been detained. Vaclav had dared to hope that that meant he had destroyed them.

  Otto, the man with three legs, was aiming a crossbow at him while the twelve dwarves of Fairyland raced to the Ferris wheel ramp and piled into the next approaching carriage.

  Their carriage was three below his; as he looked down on them, they shook their fists at him. Six of them scrabbled out of the carriage and began to climb up the superstructure. They moved much more quickly than Vaclav would have thought them able.

  From the ground Otto let a crossbow bolt fly.

  It hurtled through the air, and missed.

  But the next one might not.

  He crouched inside the carriage, gazing fearfully over the edge at the ground below as he was swept aloft. The members of Caligari’s dread family were massing. Beyond, he saw domes of ethereal color surrounding some of the other rides—the Tunnel of Love, the fun house, th
e Chamber of Horrors, the carousel.

  Demons and humans were beginning to climb into other carriages in pursuit of him, he knew; others crowded around the console at the base, pushing buttons, then pulling on the emergency brake.

  With a terrible groan, the Ferris wheel slowed, then ground to a halt.

  They will get me, he thought sickly. They will stop me. Then he saw a flash of movement on the superstructure of the wheel itself. He squinted, seeing nothing…or was there a hand gripping a metal strut?

  Then he heard a voice.

  “What the ’ell, merde!” the voice shouted. “Vaclav?”

  It was the voice that had cast the spell of invisibility over them on the cell phone. It was Le Malfaiteur.

  “How do you know me?” Vaclav shouted back.

  “I was Ethan Rayne’s dog. I saw you at the encampment.”

  The hand flickered back into Vaclav’s range of vision, and then the man’s head.

  “I can see you!” Vaclav told him.

  Le Malfaiteur intoned the words of the invisibility spell; then he vanished.

  “Where have you been?” Vaclav said. “They waited and waited!”

  “I was…I’m ’elping now,” he said. “I thought of Cordelia, so lovely. Too pretty to die.” He chuckled. “Ethan and I both have an eye for the ladies.”

  “Well, she may be dead by now!” Vaclav told him. “You have to get the prism. They need it to complete their spell!”

  He heard shouting; voices getting louder. One of his “friends,” Max, who was wearing his true visage—he was a purple chitenous demon with claw-like legs—was scrambling toward them like a man-sized crab; he was being followed by Bettina, the Lindwurm, who was inching up the metal girders. Heading for him.

  He added, “You need to stay invisible. If they see you, they’ll go after you.”

  “I can’t ’old it very long,” Le Malfaiteur said. “The magickal field is too strong.”

  “Hurry!” Vaclav implored him.

  Le Malfaiteur did not reply. Vaclav waited, then called out, “Where are you?”

  And then he realized that he shouldn’t talk to him any longer. Their enemies—once his only family!—were getting closer. He could see their eyes, which seemed so foreign to him now.

  “Vaclav, damn you, what are you doing?” Max shouted at him.

  Vaclav took a breath. He ticked a glance where he had last seen Le Malfaiteur. He could see the barest outline of his body. He had moved an astonishing distance; of course, he was a warlock!

  But he was becoming more solid.

  I have to do something, Vaclav thought.

  He looked at Max, and at all the others. At the glowing domes surrounding the rides. He thought of the centuries he had traveled with the carnival; he could hear the chuffing of the horses and the jingling of the bells on the Gypsy’s wagon.

  Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe they will take me back, he thought desperately. I’m so terrified.

  But he knew what Caligari would do to him. He would take his mind, and make him like Sandra, and that new one, Carl.

  He peered over at Le Malfaiteur. He was almost there. But he was nearly fully visible.

  He stood in the carriage. “What we’re doing is evil!” he shouted at Max. At Bettina, whose underbelly was beginning to glow as she moved into position to shoot her heat at him, wrapping herself around a girder. “The carnival must be stopped!”

  “You must be stopped!” Max shouted back.

  Yes, Vaclav thought, shaking with fear. They were focusing on him.

  Rushing at him.

  Getting ready to kill him.

  “You are dying, Slayer,” Caligarius crowed as the world grew dimmer around Buffy. She couldn’t breathe. She wasn’t sure her lungs were even working anymore.

  Things were flickering around them, and she could tell he was freaking out.

  But he was still standing, and she was not.

  “You are dying,” he said again, maybe to rub it in. “And Sunnydale will die with you. Even better, it will go to hell. And it will be your fault.”

  My fault?

  Those were fighting words.

  My fault?

  Better than any magick spell on earth, they galvanized her.

  Blindly she pushed past him, flinging herself at the calliope. She reached out both her hands and grabbed at it.

  If this is his heart, I’m going to squeeze the life out of it.

  It was a not pretty, but death rarely was.

  Vaclav’s self-sacrifice had bought Le Malfaiteur the time he needed to get to the prism. It was a simple little mirror secured to a metal rod, and angled such that as one passed, one might take a glance into it…and feel so incredibly lazy.

  He chuckled and reached out a hand. He still didn’t know why he had bothered to come back. On the one hand, he had nursed a niggling little fear that perhaps if Caligari won the day, Ethan would return to claim a reward. Ethan Rayne on his own was a formidable foe, but allied with one such as this…Ethan might do more than turn him into an animal next time their paths crossed.

  Was it self-preservation, then? Or…was it because of that pretty jeune fille, Cordelia? Hard to say. At any rate, bien, here he was, like some ridiculous musketeer in a novel by Dumas.

  But he plucked the prism like a ripe piece of fruit—a tempting apple, perhaps—and recast his invisibility spell.

  They were still tearing Vaclav’s body to shreds.

  Requiescat in pace.

  In the freak show, the monsters slammed against the wards that Giles, Ms. Calendar, and Willow had erected and strengthened numerous times.

  “The barriers are weakening,” Giles said.

  Oh my God, Cordelia thought, we’re gonna die!

  And then, like some kind of hero, Le Malfaiteur appeared beside her. Poof! Just like that! He was holding a small mirror in his hand, and Cordelia cried, “Wow, am I glad to see you!”

  “And I you,” he said, laughing, as he grabbed her around the waist and gave her the best, juiciest kiss. It was an earth-shaking, mind-blowing—

  “Ritual,” she said breathlessly. “Now.”

  “Now,” Giles agreed.

  While Le Malfaiteur strengthened the wards, Cordelia placed the mirror with the other prisms. Then Giles, Ms. Calendar, Willow, and Le Malfaiteur spread out their hands.

  “By the dark Goddess of Destruction, by the power of entropy, we call upon the ending! The ruination! Break this heart!”

  Willow was crying, afraid of the strange, shadowy sensation that was pouring through her as they chanted; and she was grieving for Vaclav. Le Malfaiteur had told them of his sacrifice.

  But they had to press on. They had to try to destroy this thing, now—

  “Make the heart of the demon end, make it stop!”

  “We call upon the Goddess, the Dark Lady, stop it now!”

  “Oh my God, something is happening!” Willow screamed.

  Blinding white light filled the room.

  The carnival was strangling. Withering.

  And though Caligari knew it, he was not willing to go down without a fight; he reappeared as his huge, demonic self, clutching his heart as Buffy, trapped inside it, did all the damage she possibly could.

  “I would have made you my queen,” he thundered.

  She didn’t know how she could hear him. How she could understand the words he spoke. She was blind from lack of oxygen. She couldn’t feel. She could only…slay.

  So she ripped and clawed and tore. She swam in green demon blood, drowned in it, as his heart began to pound too fast, too hard, trapping her, pulling her inside the chambers and flinging her from one side to another.

  I’m dying, she thought. But so is he.

  “I will not die. The souls will feed me,” he gasped. “They will feed me and I will rise again! I always have. And I will now!”

  The carnival glowed with lights, refracting and shimmering against the black velvet night. Seven attractions blazed with light—the
six that had housed prisms, and the freak show—and then they all became white, crystalline, and pure.

  In the fun house, figures burst out of the glowing rectangles: Carl Palmer, the Hahn twins, Principal Snyder and the carousel riders; and leading the charge—Xander Lavelle Harris.

  They were the souls Caligari had trapped and fed on for millennia. Following Xander, they flooded the fun house as the lights flashed and the laughter echoed down the corridors for the last time—thousands of shimmering ovals poured out after them, having no form other than light.

  But having an agenda nevertheless: escape.

  “No!” Caligari shouted. “No, stop them! Stop him!”

  Then he fell to the earth in an enormous, ground-shaking collapse.

  Buffy yanked and pulled her way out of his chest cavity, swimming in foul demon blood as it gushed out of the exit wound she created.

  She panted, sucking in breath after breath. Her lungs felt seared; her mind began to clear.

  She turned and stared at the demon. He was beginning to disintegrate already.

  She slipped and slid on the viscous liquid as she cried, “Mom! Where are you?”

  The carnival shifted and shimmered, a kaleidoscope of the disguises it had worn: burlesque houses and opium dens and the Grand Guignol of France; public executions and cockfights and medieval jousts. Witch burnings and Druid festivals; raves and concerts and gladiatorial combats.

  Images crisscrossed one another as they winked in and out of existence, as the people in the images lost definition, some to decay into skeletons, others to dissolve into light.

  And then Caligari’s body came apart in huge, decaying chunks. Maggots wriggled in the flesh. It quickly liquefied and sank into the ground in rivulets, soaking the earth with its foulness.

  Buffy staggered backward, covering her mouth. The need to inhale was stronger than her revulsion, but she hated drawing the terrible stench into her body.

  From out of the ground a black mist rose on geysers of steam. It was pure, distilled evil. It was the heart of darkness.