“Tomorrow morning, assuming he bothers to come home tonight at all, I’m going to tell him he’s grounded,” Mr. Harris said.
“Got to have some rules in this house,” Mrs. Harris replied happily. Completely asleep, she pulled a drag off her cigarette.
Joyce Summers stood and stared out a window in her living room. In her hands, she cradled a long, very sharp stake. Its weight was a very real connection to reality for her.
Her conversation with Cordelia had been helpful in getting a focus, something she had been dealing with off and on ever since Buffy returned home. Reality had been somewhat subjective for her, as it was for all parents who alternated between wanting to know what their kids were getting into and then wanting desperately not to know. It was just that, in her case, the consequences of that knowledge were so much higher.
She’d managed to get to sleep for a few hours. When she woke, Joyce realized that whatever was going on tonight was very grave. From what little Cordelia had said, just from the fact that Cordelia Chase had come into the house at all . . . Joyce knew the stakes were high. And Buffy was out there fighting. Her little girl faced horrors most people couldn’t imagine. She’d insisted that Joyce stay out of it. That she would just be a liability, a distraction that might actually get Buffy killed instead of helping.
But tonight, Joyce felt something odd. Buffy needed all the help she could get. There was something . . . it was as if Buffy was slipping away, being taken from her.
Which was why she had gone into Buffy’s drawer and found the stake. She’d put on a jacket and her sneakers, and gone to the front door. Joyce had the front door open before she realized that she had no idea where Buffy was. No idea, even, where Cordelia had gone. There was nothing she could do.
She stood at the window, numb, holding the stake and waited for her daughter to come home.
After the rest of their troupe had been slaughtered by the dark faerie, Robin Hood and King Richard—who had long ago given up any attachment to their real names—had used their magic to heal each other as best they could. Then they had followed the trail of the dark faerie using a tracking spell Robin had been perfecting for years without having any real way to test it.
They’d wanted Roland back, but realized very quickly that there wasn’t much chance of that. When they had first discovered that the Hunt had come to Sunnydale, well, there was only one thing to do: survive until morning and then get the hell out.
Easier said than done.
Robin felt the strain horribly. Already he had moved from a standing position to sitting on his wet bum on this dewy grassy slope, elbows on his knees, feeding as much magical energy as he could funnel from the ether into the upkeep of the barrier holding the Wild Hunt within the forest. There was no way they could hope to battle the Erl King openly. But if they couldn’t fight him, they could at least try to stop him.
“Wow,” said the kid who’d brought them coffee. “This is . . . it’s just amazing.”
Robin said nothing. Richard only grunted. They had both thanked him for the coffee however. It was that flavored hazelnut crap, but Robin figured beggars couldn’t choose. Without the coffee, and the accompanying caffeine, he might have just given up half an hour ago.
It was a futile effort, though. Another fifteen minutes. Even forty-five. It wouldn’t make a difference. There was no way he and fat Richard were going to be able to keep this up until morning.
“You guys must know Mr. Giles, huh?” Brian asked. “He knows all about this kind of thing.”
“Never heard of him,” Robin said, mostly to have something in his brain besides keeping the magic flowing.
“You aren’t friends of his?” Brian asked. “Then how did you know about . . . I mean, why are you doing this?”
Robin smiled thinly, but didn’t turn his attention from the barrier. It was Richard who answered the kid’s question.
“You misunderstand, lad,” Richard said. “We aren’t heroic wizards from some fairy tale. We’re warlocks. Black magicians. We’re only here because the Erl King—I assume you know who we mean, seeing as you were stuck with him inside our barrier—will have our guts for garters if he catches up with us.”
The kid, Brian, was quiet. After a moment, he asked. “Why?”
“We kept his son prisoner,” Richard replied coolly.
Robin shook his head. “Look, kid, thank you for the coffee,” he said. “But maybe you should be getting home now, eh?”
There was no reply. Robin didn’t even have to turn around to know that Brian was already moving up the embankment as quickly as he could.
Good for him, Robin thought. At least one of us will see the sun again.
But just as he thought this, he felt something else. The barrier had been under intense pressure from the inside for three quarters of an hour, at the very least. Suddenly, that pressure had greatly lessened, as if someone had opened a valve somewhere.
“Richard?” Robin asked tentatively.
“I feel it, Rob,” Richard replied. “They’ve stopped trying. They’re giving up. I think they might even be going back. Going home.”
“Thank God,” Robin whispered.
“It isn’t God, Rob,” Richard said confidently. “He doesn’t owe us any favors, that one. If we live through this, it’ll be pure luck. Pure luck.”
Buffy pulled on her horse’s reins to allow the pair of elfin Huntsmen to pass her by on the path. The Erl King had sent them riding in opposite directions along the perimeter of the forest in search of a break in the magical barrier that was holding them all inside the dense woods.
Roland rode up next to Buffy. Together, they watched the two fur-draped outriders report to the Lord of the Hunt.
“Well?” the Erl King boomed, snorting orange flames, his fury growing with each passing moment.
“We are trapped, my Lord,” one of the Huntsmen said.
A tiny smile began to play at the edges of Buffy’s lips and she forced it away. The Hunt wouldn’t take any more lives in Sunnydale tonight. Her mother was safe. For the moment, at least.
“We cannot leave without having our vengeance on the ones who made Roland suffer so!” the Erl King snarled. “Ride again. We’ve got to find a way out of here.”
Roland led his mare a few paces forward with a regal dignity that surprised Buffy. “Father,” he called. “The faerie killed most of them. If some of them yet live, their lives are as good as over. They don’t matter. They have been punished and I am back with you now.”
“They haven’t been punished enough,” Hern the Hunter scowled, fire jetting from his nostrils.
“What would be enough? Surely not even death,” Roland reasoned.
Hern stared at his son for a moment, then he threw his head back and rumbled laughter from deep within himself, and fire belched from his throat with each note of amusement.
“You are my son,” the Erl King said.
More than ever, Buffy felt relieved. The Wild Hunt would be gone from Sunnydale. If they ever came back, it would probably not be for a very long time. Now they would . . .
“Oh, no,” Buffy whispered to herself. Her heart raced and for a moment she couldn’t take a breath, waiting for the order she feared would now come.
And it did.
The Erl King raised his sword high. “Very well, then, we return to the Lodge for a feast unlike any we have ever known. We celebrate the return of the prince, and we prepare for his wedding to the Slayer!”
“No,” Buffy whispered.
But already, she could feel her body responding to the commands of the Erl King. She had sworn her loyalty, after all. Stinging, salty tears began to well up in her eyes and her heart felt like it was trying to escape her chest, so hard and fast was it beating.
Roland looked at her in sympathy. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’ve done all I can.”
“Giles, hurry!” Willow snapped.
She kept glancing up at Cordelia, who was standing watch just off the wide path. Nothing so far, b
ut it wouldn’t be long. Willow thought they were lucky the Erl King had been so stubborn up until now. But even he would have to give in to futility soon.
“I think I’ve got it right,” Giles said.
Willow looked over at Giles, who sat cross-legged in a pentagram he’d drawn in the dirt with a thick branch. At its five points, little more than furrows in the soil, were pieces of wood whose tips were wound with strips of Oz’s shirt, which had been in tatters anyway. Angel had supplied them with an old metal Zippo lighter that he said had belonged to Spike. He’d apparently found it when he’d returned to the house he’d shared with Spike and Drusilla before they’d fled Sunnydale.
For her part, Willow had produced a small, blood-stained note pad and a ballpoint pen from one of the deep pockets of her jacket. Giles was busily scribbling away even now, trying desperately to recall a powerful spell he’d committed to memory some years ago, when studying to become a Watcher.
Xander had contributed a handful of mini Milky Way bars he’d stolen from a bag his mother had bought to give out on Halloween night. Though Giles had tried to explain it to him, he just couldn’t seem to grasp the reason why he was forced to give up his personal stash of chocolatey goodness. But Giles had insisted.
Willow was proud of Xander, though. No matter how many jokes he might make, and in spite of the fear they were all feeling, much of the plan they were about to enact had come from Xander. He constantly belittled his own contributions, so much so that Willow wondered at times if he had actually fooled the others into not noticing how often he came through with a plan. Willow was proud of him. The man with the plan. And, almost as important in this case, the snack food.
“Is that going to be enough?” Willow asked now, staring at the candy.
“It will have to be,” Giles replied. “We haven’t any wine or bread or fruit. And the loa—the great spirits to which we communicate in voodoo ritual—are often placated with honey and sweets as well. If it’s going to work at all, this should be a sufficient offering.”
Willow shook her head. “I still don’t understand how it could work. Whatever magic is involved in the Hunt, it’s got to be some pretty ancient stuff, right? And culturally, it couldn’t be further away from voodoo.”
Giles stared at her. “If you must know, it’s the only thing I could think of,” he admitted. “Let’s hope one walking dead man isn’t much different from another, hmm?”
Then he stood and handed her two small pieces of note paper. “Make sure you can read it.”
Willow glanced down at the scribbled French, trying to decipher it as best she could. A few yards away Cordelia cleared her throat loudly. Then Willow heard the thundering of hooves.
“It would appear to be show time,” Giles said calmly.
“Oh,” Willow breathed. She had succeeded in pushing her fear away by focusing on the danger Buffy was in. But now it all came rushing back. She’d been afraid before, when they’d faced horrors she’d never imagined. But this was different. This wasn’t just some hellish demon ready to rip out their hearts, this was almost an army. The odds were . . . the odds were impossible.
Willow swallowed hard and settled down inside the pentagram with a dirty and sweating Giles, who was even now lighting the makeshift torches around the circle. If the odds were impossible, they would just have to even them a bit.
“Here goes,” she muttered.
The Erl King had moved on. He would not forget what had happened here. Nor would he give up his vendetta against those few who had survived the dark faerie’s retrieval of Roland. The warlocks would die one day. But for now, there was a wedding to prepare for. The very thought filled him with pleasure. He had loved a Slayer once, but had not been able to wed her. Now Roland would have what Hern himself had always mourned the loss of—a bride worthy of the Lord of the Hunt.
His sword sheathed, the Erl King signaled for the horn. It sounded deep and clear through the trees. He spurred his stallion forward and the Hunt fell in beside and behind him. The hounds bayed as they ran on ahead, and the dark faerie clung to the horses’ manes and saddles, rode the backs of hounds and swung and cavorted in the branches above.
One of the dark faerie landed in his lap. The Erl King glanced down and saw that it had no head. Before the fury that was stoked in the furnace of his chest could even begin to rise, the horse pulled up short and he rocked forward, scrabbling to hold onto his mount.
Across the path in front of him were four black bucks, their gray and rotted viscera strewn across the ground. He hadn’t even noticed their absence, and now the extraordinary insult of this affront, this incursion into his territory, made Hern scream with rage and draw his sword. His huge chest billowed with the roar of fury, eyes blazing, sharp teeth flashing in what little moonlight reached down into the wood.
The hounds ran forward and buried their black, fiery snouts in the open guts of the dead bucks. The dark faerie fell from the trees and raced along the path to begin ripping chunks of the bucks out for themselves and gulping them down their gullets as fast as the greedy little creatures could. They began to fight each other, and the hounds, for each bit of flesh.
The Erl King roared his displeasure, commanded them to stop. But they were already in a frenzy. He would have to interfere more directly.
“Huntsmen, stop them!” he ordered, with a chop of his hand, and a nod of his horned head. “And find the ones responsible for this effrontery. I want their teeth for a string of pearls!”
There were seventeen riders of the Hunt left, without counting the Slayer, the girl Treasure, or his son. Five rode ahead to scatter the hounds and the faerie. The Erl King waved for the others to fan out into the woods and bring his enemies to him. He would feel their eyes pop and spurt between his jagged teeth.
He surveyed the wide path, back and front. Behind him, he saw his son and the Slayer holding their counsel together. He wanted to think they were bonding, as a couple about to be wed ought to. But something else struck him.
The Slayer’s friends. The ones she had sacrificed herself to free. The way the dark-haired boy had stared him in the face and lied, and held his head high in disrespect.
Hern the Hunter knew.
“My Lord!” one of the Huntsmen called.
The Erl King looked around in astonishment as the Huntsmen began to fall from their mounts, to tumble like stricken children to the ground below. Their own horses trampled them on the path and on the forest floor, with the sound of breaking bones and another sound, like the rush of air through the leaves above. But they felt no pain, that much was obvious. Those who fell were dead before they struck the ground. Closest to the Erl King, a rider named Pontius, whom he’d had with him since he’d stopped the human from hanging himself in the twelfth century, fell from his horse and exploded in a cloud of black mist, leaving only a dry, ragged, shattered husk and a pile of leather and fur.
For the first time in a thousand years, the Erl King felt a tiny twinge of cold in his gut. A feeling he could not name. Whatever it was, however, he did not like it.
“Search the trees!” he roared, sword high. “Find them and bring them to me!”
The nine Hunters who remained were elfin creatures he had conscripted from his own realm. They had never been human. Somehow, the spark, the fire of the Hunt that he had given to those humans who had joined him . . . that spark had been taken away. The life he had granted as a boon to the faithful had been snuffed.
The Erl King growled deep in his chest, and dipped his horns slightly, instinctively, wanting nothing more than his enemy’s guts on the points of those antlers. As one, the nine elfin Huntsmen began to crash through the trees on their dark steeds, shouting with a fury that rivaled the King’s own.
Only a few feet away from the King’s horse, the dark faerie and the hounds still tore into the corpses of the dead bucks. Now some of the faerie had begun to drift over to what little remained of the fallen Huntsmen. Less competition.
The Erl King lowered his
sword, just a bit.
Which was when the vampire dropped from the branches above and tore at his throat with razor claws.
“Angel!” Buffy shouted.
He struggled with the Erl King for a moment, gnashing teeth and flashing claws, and then they both tumbled from the back of the king’s stallion. Angel rushed at him again, but the Erl King batted him away with a single blow from his huge, taloned hand. Angel slammed against a thick tree trunk and collapsed onto a nest of exposed roots, his forehead slapping the ground.
The Erl King moved toward him.
Buffy raised her sword, urging herself to move forward to protect him, but could not.
“Roland!” she cried, and turned to him in desperation.
The prince of the Hunt hung his head in shame. A tear glistened in his eyes and he seemed to shrink down inside the leather and fur he wore now as the heir to the Erl King. “Your oath binds you, Buffy,” he reminded her.
“It’s working!” Willow shouted from her post behind a tree. “All the dead guys are . . . dead. We’ve cut them down by more than half, I think!”
One of the hounds turned its attention to her, growling and running at her. It leaped, aiming for her throat.
Treasure’s eyes darted around. She didn’t know what to do. After what happened to Pontius and the others, she wondered why she hadn’t just collapsed. Maybe it wasn’t too late for her? Maybe she could still get out? Maybe she wasn’t really dead yet.
A hand gripped her ankle, hard, and pulled. Treasure slid off the back of the horse and all the air went out of her lungs—she saw a bit of black tinging her breath. She scrambled, trying to get to her feet, reaching for her sword.
Willow screamed as the dog’s fiery breath singed her throat.
Oz leaped across the path, muscle and sinew rippling beneath his fur, and grabbed the hound up in both hands, then brought it down hard, breaking its back with a sound like pottery shattering.
“Get the others,” Oz growled, then he was off, running at a still-mounted Hunter, leaping up to tear the elfin rider down from his horse, and tearing into the evil thing with his claws.
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