He was right in front of her. Less than twenty feet away. At his side, King Richard stood, tall in his arrogance and not the least bit clownish, despite his girth.
“Buffy, run, please,” Roland pleaded.
Good advice, considering that the rest of the troupe had appeared now. Some of them crackled with oddly colored energy, just as Robin Hood had. Several, including a woman with round black eyes, didn’t even seem to be human. Buffy was surrounded, but she was confident she could get away if that was what she wanted.
She took a quick glance back at Roland, saw the desperation there. He’d given up on himself. He wanted her to run. But now that Buffy had seen him again, had looked into his eyes again, she could never leave. No matter what he was, she knew for certain now that there was a soul in there.
“I’m not going anywhere without you,” she told him.
King Richard laughed, deep and cruel.
“Kill her.”
Chapter 10
JAMIE ANDERSON SMELLED LIKE WHISKEY. OR, AT LEAST, Cordelia guessed that was the smell. It was all generic booze stench to her, and it wasn’t at all pleasant. She prayed silently that the odor wouldn’t linger in her car too long.
“It’s just ahead,” Mr. Anderson told her.
Cordelia guided the car to the curb, and kept her mouth shut. Whacked out or not, he was still a cop. She didn’t think it was a good idea for people to know that some of Mr. Giles’s female students were quite familiar with the way to his house. As had so frequently been pointed out, Cordelia was born without tact. She had no use for the gentle untruths that protected fragile egos. She didn’t lie.
But she had found that there were times when it was best to say nothing.
Mr. Anderson got out of the car, but Cordelia paused with one leg out. She debated a moment, then thumbed the button to lower the window just an inch. She didn’t want to have the car stolen, or the stereo, or the airbag. Anything. But she wanted to air out the stink as much as possible before getting back into the car.
She managed to wedge her keys into her pocket, then followed the man up the walkway to his building. He hadn’t so much as glanced at her the entire ride over, and that didn’t change now. Without a word, he held the gate for her, and Cordelia started up the steps to his apartment, letting Mr. Anderson follow her up.
At the top of the stairs, they turned right, and came to the door to Jamie’s apartment. His big mass of keys jangled as he worked all three locks on the door, and then the door swung wide. Mr. Anderson stood aside to let Cordelia enter.
When she crossed the threshold, she felt a sudden and overwhelming sense of discomfort. It was one thing to have given him a ride in her car. It was another thing entirely to be in his home. She felt like she had walked right into his life in a way she didn’t have any desire to do. She was in his living room, now. Not a stranger, but, at the very least, a new acquaintance.
Cordelia was smart enough to know when she was being selfish. Most of the time, like now, she didn’t really care. Here was a man who, just a short while ago, had very seriously contemplated blasting his brains all over the ancient history section of the school library. He’d been chugging along toward death full speed ahead. The rest of them had gotten in the way, because that’s what you were supposed to do.
But Cordelia didn’t want to have to watch out for him now. He was nothing to her. Some cop who lived in Giles’s building. And in a less than immaculate apartment, to say the least. The place needed a serious hosing down, or a sandblasting, or whatever. The curtains were dingy, the carpet spotted, and the coffee table had so many condensation ring stains from bottles of beer and glasses of booze that it almost looked like the pattern was intentional.
She felt a bit queasy for a moment, and was very glad Giles had locked up Jamie Anderson’s gun for the night. The guy seemed okay for the moment, but if he was still bent on taking his own life, Cordelia wasn’t going to be able to stop him alone.
Creepy didn’t even begin to describe the feeling that washed over her now. She didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to be personal with this man. Didn’t want to know him or be concerned for him. She had enough people she’d foolishly allowed herself to become concerned about. Besides, he was obviously a bit unhinged. There was no way to know exactly what he’d do now.
He made them tea.
Cordelia stood by the window looking out, wondering if Xander and the others were all right. She sipped her chamomile and tried to focus on keeping the tangible distance that existed between herself and Mr. Anderson.
“Listen, I just wanted to say thank you,” Jamie said, breaking a silence of several minutes.
“Hey, no problem,” Cordelia replied. “It’s not much of a drive.”
“You know I’m not just talking about the ride,” the man said.
Cordelia didn’t want to hear the pathetic tone in his voice, the aching sadness there. But she couldn’t help it. She’d so hoped that he would just try to be macho, and keep up a tough facade. Maybe he just hurts too much, she thought. To have his son back, and then lose him again so horribly.
She turned from the window and faced him. “You’re welcome,” she said, and walked over to sit by him and drink her tea. Cordelia put on a happy face and sat forward to give him her full attention.
“Tell me about your son,” she said.
Jamie Anderson’s red, bleary eyes widened and a weak smile played at the corners of his mouth.
“Ever since he could walk, he’s always wanted to go out and have adventures,” Mr. Anderson began.
Cordelia really listened.
The woods on the outskirts of Sunnydale were lined with pathways. Some were wide and well-trodden, others overgrown with disuse. Brian Anderson had rambled through these woods hundreds of times in his life, and yet somehow, when they’d brought him here, he’d recognized nothing.
There were still paths, he noted. But none of them were familiar. The air seemed lighter, like they were on top of a mountain, or something, and Brian found himself gasping for breath several times. Just something odd about the air. About the dark, and the way it kind of floated there, swirling in and out of trees that seemed about to bend over and grab him up with their gnarled limbs.
Brian was relieved that the weird swirling darkness, the . . . breathing dark, was only in the trees, up in the branches, and not flowing over the paths. He felt as if it were watching him somehow, that if it wanted to, it could reach out for him and . . . brrrr. He didn’t want to be a prisoner, thrown across the saddle of a huge snorting horse. But Brian felt that there were other things out there in the forest that were even more dangerous, more savage.
Thankfully, he noticed that not all of the trees looked, well, evil. Several times, as they rode through the wood, they’d passed trees he recognized, including a particularly thick one he and his friends had always called “Big Ugly,” and in which they’d once built a fort out of wood stolen from a new home construction site in Sunnydale.
And the clearing. He knew this clearing.
But it had never looked like this.
It was a wide field in the middle of the wood, with rock formations and a massive old oak spiking toward the sky. They’d made up wonderful fantasies when they were kids about the many reasons why ancient civilizations might have designed such a place. It did seem to have been made by design, actually. Carved, somehow, from the rest of the forest.
Now the clearing was overrun by creatures so dark they absorbed the light of the moon. Brian stood inside a large cage, fashioned from thick bamboo, with Treasure lying at his feet. She was unconscious, and no amount of trying to wake her had worked. Neither did he have any idea how the cage with them inside had been transported, but it wasn’t as though he’d had much opportunity to ask questions.
Treasure looked horrible. The clothes she wore— what was left of them—were filthy rags. Her nails were broken and bleeding. He wasn’t sure she had had anything to eat. Through the strips of fabric, he could see
her ribs.
In spite of the unnatural darkness, Brian could see by the light of three large fires being tended by looming black figures. These were the things the English librarian dude had been talking about with him and his father. The Wild Hunt. They were the things that had thrown a net over him and dragged him away from his father.
It was real. It was true. It was happening.
To him.
The shadowy figures who were nurturing the fires around the clearing were Huntsmen. At the edges of the clearing, black dogs sniffed the dirt, tiny jets of flame spouting from their snouts with each breath. It had taken Brian some time to realize it, but their paws never touched the ground. Those were the hell-hounds. The horses were much the same, with dark, glowing eyes and plumes of fire erupting from their nostrils. They were eerily tame, as if they merely awaited their master’s command. Brian also saw at least seven different black deer, all huge bucks with massive racks of antlers.
And then there was the leader: the Erl King, who himself had antlers. It was a disturbing sight, once Brian realized that it wasn’t merely some decorative head gear. There were few points, nothing like the bucks that ran with them, but the Lord of the Wild Hunt had horns growing from the sides of his head.
It wasn’t enough that Brian saw it all, he had to smell it all as well. Ghosts or specters they might be, but the animals smelled real enough. So did the humans who were with the Hunt. Some rode horses, while others walked by the cage. Several who passed had given him and Treasure a look of great sadness, but most of them either laughed or took no notice of their situation at all.
“Shock?” the small voice said beside him.
Brian glanced over to see that Treasure had finally woken up completely. Her eyes looked like two bruises.
“It’s Brian,” he said. “My name’s Brian.”
Shock had seemed like such a cool name at the time. He was a rebel, living on the edge. Now all he wanted was to be home again, to put all that time on the streets behind him. But it didn’t look like he was ever going to get a chance. Or a chance to work things out with his dad.
“What are they gonna do to us?” Treasure asked. When he looked into her wide, blackened eyes, he reminded himself how young she was.
“I don’t know” was all he said.
Around them the riders of the Hunt began to stir, as if in response to some inaudible call to action. Brian had caught sight of several things that, even more so than the rest, terrified him.
The terror had begun when the Erl King grabbed him away from his father, but that had been only the beginning. Lurking in the woods, sliding in and out of tree branches, behind horses and Huntsmen, there were dozens of wraith-like things. Ghosts. They had to be, because they had form. They had faces. And they were quite obviously tied here, no less prisoners of the Erl King than Brian and Treasure were.
There were monsters. He couldn’t think of any other way to describe them. Several abominable creatures. Maybe worse were the little green men. Savage little creatures the librarian had referred to as “dark faerie,” whatever that meant. What was important, however, was that a short while ago, the Erl King had issued commands in a language Brian had never heard before, and nearly all of the little beasts had run off.
All but the few who capered about on the Erl King’s face and horns, dropping down to his shoulders and onto the head of his horse, and cackling as if it were all a game.
In spite of it all, most of Brian’s terror centered around the Erl King himself. He was huge, shoulders wider than his horse, and he had fur on his arms and face in great abundance. He was draped in layer after layer of fur, and hefted a large battleaxe in his hand.
The Erl King whistled. His many huntsmen mounted their horses and managed to form a rough semicircle, with him at the center. Once they had all gathered, the king opened his mouth, and for the first time, Brian heard him speak.
“Soon we will have what we came for. And our vengeance as well,” the Erl King said. His voice was low, but it seemed to carry, filling every corner of the clearing, rising to the highest branch of the tallest tree. When he spoke, his words sounded as though they were layered over another sound, a low, deep growling that might have come from the throat of an angry wolf, but certainly not from a man.
More than ever, Brian was convinced the Erl King had never been a man.
“We ride now,” the king said. “My own lash on the shoulders of any glutton. This place called to us, we belong here, and we have the ever-unfolding night in which to hunt here.
“First, though, to our captives.”
Then the Erl King did something Brian had been praying he would never do. The horned man turned his burning gaze on Brian Anderson and, through a veil of thick, scraggly beard, the Erl King grinned.
“Now, let us see,” the growling voice said, as the king rode toward them.
“Oh, my God!” Treasure shrieked. She got to her feet and threw herself against the cage, scrabbling mindlessly to get away.
Brian flailed for her, but he was rooted to the spot. He wanted to look at her, to tell her not to give up, that people would be looking for them. The cops had her locket. This Giles dude knew about occult things.
And his own father was looking for them, and his father would find him and save him.
He wanted to tell her all these things, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the Erl King’s blazing red eyes.
“I will speak plainly,” the Erl King said, in a guttural snarl that caused Brian to gasp, then breathe quickly, in ragged intakes of air. “There is magic all around you here. Dark magic the likes of which the human mind cannot comprehend. If you would live, you may ride with the Hunt.”
Brian stared in awe. “Ride? With the . . . Oh, God. You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
The Erl King stared.
“Swear your fealty to me, forever, and with dark magic, you will be bound by that vow. Only then can I trust anyone to join the Hunt. But it is your only choice, children. Hunter, or hunted?”
Treasure began to cry in great, sobbing gasps for air. Tears streamed down her face as she tumbled to the floor of the cage and huddled facedown in the dirt.
“Please, just let us go,” Brian begged. “We haven’t done anything to you.”
The Erl King’s horse whinnied, sending a jet of flame spouting over Brian’s head. It almost seemed as though the beast was laughing. Brian cried out in anger and fear and frustration and embarrassment, and then began to slam his forearms against the bamboo posts of the cage, though he hadn’t a prayer of breaking them by himself.
“Very well,” the Erl King rasped. “You stay in the cage.”
Brian felt a wave of relief wash over him. He’d half expected to be set free and hunted, or just executed right there. It had bought him some time, he figured. Time to think. To plan.
“I’ll . . . I’ll go with you,” Treasure whispered, so low that Brian hoped, prayed that the king had not heard it.
“Connie, no!” Brian said desperately, knowing that tone in her voice was the sound of despair and surrender.
Treasure was still crying, but the tears streamed silently down her cheeks now. The time for sobbing was done. When all hope was gone, there was no need for shouting and discord. Despair was quiet.
“Come, then, my pretty girl,” the Erl King said, and the animal in his heart, some fundamental link to all that was savage in nature, roared its pleasure with each syllable.
Several of the horned man’s servants came and removed Treasure from the cage, shoving Brian roughly to the hard bamboo bars on the ground. He smelled the cloying earth through the bars, and he smelled people. The filthy, terrified people who’d been in this cage before him, Treasure included.
He tried not to wonder where they all had gone.
After the door was shut behind her, Treasure was led to a horse, which she quickly mounted. He could hear her sniffling, putting away her tears.
She looked horrible. Her hair was greasy and stringy,
her face a bruised, muddy mess. She looked like a little girl thrown away in a dumpster. Not a Treasure at all, but an object to be pitied.
“Do you swear your fealty to me, Lord of the Wild Hunt, bound by the laws of magic and nature, forevermore, young one?” the Erl King demanded.
“Y-yeah,” Treasure stammered. “Yes, I do.”
“What is your name?”
She paused a moment, as if she understood that what she said now would be her name for all eternity. Finally she spoke. “Treasure,” she said, and Connie DeMarco was gone forever.
“Excellent,” said the King. “Now, let us ride. And when we return, if the wee ones have done their job, perhaps there will be a wedding.”
With the thunder of a thousand hooves, far too great a noise for the thirty-odd horses and bucks who ran through the night, the Wild Hunt had begun again.
As Brian watched, the trees seemed almost to open up, to swallow the Hunt, guiding their path toward Sunnydale. Treasure was gone. Brian had only one thought, now, as the dark creatures rushed toward town. He worried for his father.
The troupe of performers who surrounded Buffy— now revealed as witches and warlocks and mon sters—were the same people who had run the Faire, but they looked quite different. Their clothes were contemporary—jeans and shirts, skirts and blouses— but old and faded. And where before they had seemed menacing, they now looked purely evil.
“Poor Robin tried to warn you off,” fat King Richard said angrily. “He was the only one among us who might have given you that chance.”
“Just my luck,” Buffy said, and then ducked as a pair of muscular men who had previously been dressed for the Faire as knights rushed at her.
A sweep of her leg brought one of them down. Buffy followed through, coming up with her back to King Richard and her other attacker. She brought up her right hand, which held half of a broken wooden staff. It connected solidly with the knight’s face, pulping nose and cracking bone.
There were too many of them, though. They circled warily now, but if they rushed her together, she wouldn’t stand a chance. Buffy glanced around quickly, counted those who seemed to emanate any kind of weird energy. Three. Two women and a man.
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