by Nancy Holder
“Carnival, carnival,” she said, forcing herself to stay calm. After all, she was good at maintaining, even when the pressure was intense. Look at how well she handled the terrible burden of her popularity.
“I’ll get to the carnival. I’ll follow the directions on the paper.” She stuck her hand in the sack. “Oh my God, where’s the paper? It’s not here! The paper’s not here!”
Her fingers brushed the folded edge. “Oh, wait, here it is. All I have to do is follow the directions. I can do that.”
“And ah will ’elp you,” Ethan Rayne’s dog-thing told her in a French accent.
Cordelia started shrieking.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Xander heard the voice of an angel.
“Xander, Xander, oh my God, he’s dead! Look at how pasty he looks. Well, he always looks pasty. You can carry him, right?”
Or rather, the voice of Cordelia.
He tried to open his eyes. Every part of him was nauseated. He was so sick. He couldn’t imagine being sicker. He wanted to die. Really. In case anyone was listening.
There was a lot of jostling.
“Your spell is working, right? No one can see us? They don’t know we’re here?”
“It should ’old.” It was a guy’s voice, deep and French. No one Xander knew. He didn’t care, except for the knee-jerk jealousy. He hated the jostling. The jostling was evil. If it didn’t quit, he’d … he’d …
Calliope music.
Yes. Gentle and beckoning and reassuring and … food.
He was soothed. And hungry.
“Okay, Xander, listen, um, if you aren’t dead, I’m doing a spell on you, with the help of this warlock named Le Malfaiteur. That’s right, right?”
“Oui,” said the guyful voice.
“Anyway, he is really hot, I mean, ha, he was Ethan Rayne’s imprisoned dog, only he got free of the spell while Ethan was distracted fighting for his life from all those demons and vampires and things and so now he’s helping me. He wasn’t even attacking me in the store, just trying to warn me about Ethan! You got that?”
Xander had not a clue, but it didn’t matter. The music filled him.
He was so hungry for more.
“Okay, I’m ready. I’ve got the herbs and everything. Wait! Le Malfaiteur, do you have any matches? Oh, that’s so amazing! What do your other fingers do?
“Xander? Can you hear me? It’s called a Weakening Spell. It should help you. If you’re not dead. Hey, Le Malfaiteur, can you move it along? Maybe they can’t see us, but I can see them. And Xander may be on the brink …” She let out a little sob.
The calliope whispered to Xander. It sang. It said, “Eat of the fruit of good and evil. Eat more. Consume. Devour. You are ravenous.”
The music crept into his gut. Xander floated on the notes, listening to the crescendo. He drifted and dozed.
“‘… and so I demand his unbinding!’” Cordelia recited.
Xander heard the rustling of a paper near his ear. “Okay, I hope that helped.” Fingers snapping. “Hello? Hello, do you hear me?”
He couldn’t open his eyes, but he knew he was lying on a very hard surface. It was very cold.
“You’re sure the wards will hold?” Cordelia asked.
“For now. I can’t make any guarantees.”
“Okay, listen. We’re going into the freak show, but no one else will be able to go in. They’ll think it’s locked. Except maybe if the bad guys are snooping around, they might figure out that it’s bewitched.”
“My wards are very strong,” the guy said, sounding a bit offended. “And we have the amulets your sorcerer made for you.”
“My … oh! Giles! He’s not a sorcerer!”
“If you say so, ma belle.”
“Okay, you’re creeping me out.”
“It would be best to hurry,” the guy prodded.
“Okay, all right. Xander, we’re putting you in something that will help you get well. It’s that glass coffin in the freak show, but don’t freak out. It’ll heal you. I hope. Angel said so. That girl we saw in it? They were using it to heal her. That didn’t go perfect, but it was better than nothing. Anyway, don’t be scared. We’re going to close the lid now. We don’t know if we’re supposed to, but here goes nothing!”
Whump!
Knock-knock-knock.
“Xander? Xander? Oh my God, he’s not breathing!”
“They’re overrunning the town,” Willow announced as she looked up from her screen. She had hacked into the dispatcher’s computer system at the Sunnydale Police Department. They’re saying ‘gangs,’ but you know that’s what they always say.”
“Vampires and demons everywhere,” Ms. Calendar murmured as she moved to the window and peered through the venetian blinds at the night. “According to those dispatches, it’s worse than when the Master tried to open the Hellmouth. And we have hours until it’s light. They’re sure to come here.”
“My master … tried to open the Hellmouth?” Vaclav asked in a frightened, hushed voice.
“Different master,” Willow explained. “But same Hellmouth. Which, well, we’re pretty much sitting on top of it.” She made a little face. “Sorry.”
“We prevailed that time,” Giles reminded them. “And we’ll prevail again.”
Ms. Calendar moved from the window and picked up the crystal ball. “Rupert,” she said, “there are more people in here. In the hell dimension. I recognize some of my students. Larry. And there’s Chris Vardeman.”
“Damn. One assumes they’re being absorbed via Caligari’s dread machinery,” Giles said. He crossed to Vaclav. “Explain it to me again.”
“The professor has soulcatchers on the grounds,” Vaclav said. “They hypnotize you, make your temptations rise to the surface.”
Giles nodded. “Those would be the clowns. With their juggling balls.”
“No. But they help the process.” He shook his head impatiently. “The Tricksters are his minions. From the First Days. The soulcatchers all have shiny surfaces.” He pointed to the crystal ball. “The word escapes me. Mirrors, only more focused. Normal ones make rainbows. But these make a … rainbow of the vices. The Seven Deadly Sins.”
“A rainbow. You mean a spectrum,” Giles considered.
“Yes,” he said in his Bela Lugosi voice.
“Prisms,” Willow offered.
Vaclav looked excited. “Yes, that’s the word. They are prisms. They focus your weakness, and then you are lost in it. In lust, or greed … and we lure you in. We promise you what you want most.”
“But why set out my grimoire for me to find?” Giles asked. “Why tempt me to summon a horrible demon that can just as easily destroy the carnival itself?”
Vaclav shook his head. “That I cannot tell you. It makes no sense to me, either.”
“Ethan Rayne,” Jenny Calendar said coldly. “He loves chaos. Worships it. He wouldn’t pass up a chance like this to pump up the volume.”
Giles exhaled. “When I get my hands on him …”
“The soulcatchers,” Willow said, keeping the grown-ups on task. “Shiny surfaces. Prisms that focus our bad impulses. What and where are they?”
“I’d be willing to guess that one of them is located inside the Chamber of Horrors,” Giles said. “In the vampire scene.” He looked at Vaclav. “Yes?”
Vaclav hesitated, fingers kneading the edge of his sweater. “I don’t know where they are.”
“What about the moon ball on the carousel?” Willow said.
“Perhaps,” Vaclav said, lowering his gaze.
Willow pushed back from her computer. “We should go to the carnival now and see what we can find.”
“First we should try to figure this out,” Giles asserted.
“But the others don’t know about the … soulcatchers,” Willow argued. “We need to help them.”
“You can’t help them now,” said Claire Nierman as she awkwardly sat up, her hands bound behind her back. “It’s too late.”
Everyone turned. Giles walked toward her, squatting down beside her. “Why do you say that?”
She looked away. “I only have to give you my name, rank, and serial number.”
“We know you’re not with the Marine Corps,” Giles said with deadly calm. “You’re with Ethan Rayne, aren’t you?” he said. “He’s been working both sides of this, just like Jenny said.”
At the name, Claire’s eyes flickered, and Willow knew that Giles was right. Maybe she was even Ethan’s lover.
“And you probably know who I am. I’m Ethan’s old mate Ripper. And I’m willing to bet he told you why I was called that.”
Claire frowned and bit her lower lip.
“So tell me,” Giles suggested. “Why do you say that it’s too late to help them?”
A little bit of her fear faded with her bravado. “Tonight’s the Rising. Caligari’s strength is at its peak. He’ll take out everyone in Sunnydale before this night is over.”
“Tonight?” Giles stared at her. “But the Rising was two nights ago.”
“You had it wrong, honey,” she said disparagingly. “You got fed misinformation. It’s now.”
“Well, I don’t see why you’re smiling about it,” Willow piped up, protectively crossing her arms over her chest. “I mean, you’re here with us and not Ethan.”
“He’ll find me. He’ll come for me,” she said, crossing her legs at the ankles as she got more comfortable.
“Oh my God, look!” Ms. Calendar shouted. She nearly dropped the crystal ball; then as she caught it, she thrust it toward Giles and Willow.
Willow ran over and peered into it.
Her blood turned to ice. Her face was a flash fire.
Xander’s face swirled in the glass.
Mottled, bruised, and screaming.
Angel was no quitter, but two hundred and forty years of living made a man realistic.
Even if that man was a vampire with a soul.
Far be it for him to say that Sunnydale was beyond redemption, but it wasn’t looking good.
Everything in him wanted to abandon this fight and get himself to the carnival, where he might be able to do something that would tip the odds toward a better outcome than this one. If Buffy was there, she was probably in trouble. Unless Cordelia had been able to cast the Weakening Spell on her, she would still be in thrall to Caligari’s magicks.
Up to his neck in assailants—at last count, three lizard-green Shrieker demons, a Lindwurm, and an albino poisonspitter—he was worried about Cordelia’s chances of getting to the carnival, much less casting a spell on a prideful, bewitched Slayer. He wondered what she had done about the dog.
He raced down an alley with his attackers in close pursuit. Ethan Rayne had disappeared from his radar. If he wasn’t dead, then he had probably headed for the city limits. That was Ethan’s way—wreak havoc and leave.
He got around a corner and leaned against the brick exterior, regrouping as he waited for the mob that was after him to arrive. It was nice to have a second to rest. But it would be two seconds at most. He knew that.
He pushed away, preparing for a fight.
As a clutch of ax-wielding ogres dropped down from the roof above him.
The merry-go-round of the damned:
The threshers in the center of the carousel diorama finished beating Xander with their drumsticks and their cymbals. The falcons soared back onto the gauntlets of the hunters, their prey dangling from their claws and beaks: half-eaten hot dogs; pieces of popcorn; chocolate chip cookies soggy with soda; cold, congealed onion rings; and kettle corn mixed with gum.
Carnival carrion.
Holding Xander down, the men in gauntlets force-fed it to him as he choked, struggled, and gagged. They laughed. They sang, “A-hunting we will go!”
They laughed harder when he vomited.
They fed him more.
In his terrible new world the hunters and their threshers were real people. Xander was trying to figure out how many there were. He thought maybe eight. He was so sick it was hard to pay attention.
Then one of the sadists carried him back onto the carousel floor and plopped him on his fiery black carousel horse. “Behold the wages of the sin of gluttony!” he bellowed, and he rechained Xander’s wrists to the pommel on the saddle. The horse reared, chuffing smoke and fire. Its hide sizzled, and Xander gasped.
He could no longer scream.
Then the now-familiar sizzling erupted deep inside his chest and head, and he shuddered as the golden carousel pole rose. He knew the rhythm now: up when it sucked the life out of him, down for a moment of release. In tune with his heartbeat.
Each time it went up, the carousel rotated one increment. Of what kind of measurement, he had no idea.
He was not alone. Hundreds, if not thousands, of tortured people sat on creatures all around him, beside him, behind him, and in front of him. The carousel was a vast machine, and the bruised and beaten people on the carousel animals were like galley slaves, only instead of sitting at long oars and rowing, they were powering the rising movements of the poles.
And each time the poles went up, a calliope note sounded. Their energy was making the calliope play.
In this dimension or the other one or both, Xander had no idea.
“Food, glorious food!” the calliope played. And God help him, Xander was hungry.
Then two of the hunters were unchaining him again; he moaned because he knew what was coming.
They held him down and force-fed him again.
Then he was on his horse, his insides crackling, and the carousel rotated again.
He was losing consciousness when he heard a familiar voice.
“You people are in so much trouble. I have friends in high places, you know, and once they hear about this, you are going to have more than the school board to answer to!”
It was Principal Snyder, one creature ahead of him. The man sat astride a half-horse, half-fish creature. Xander stared at his bald head, drinking in the sound of his voice over the discordant notes of the calliope. How bad was Xander’s world, that he was happy to see him?
“Hey,” Xander called to him. “Principal Snyder.”
Snyder looked over his shoulder with a horribly bruised face and two black eyes. His lip was split.
“Harris!” He glared at him. “I should have known you were behind all this.”
Xander huffed. “Do I look like I’m behind all this?”
Then the person riding beside Xander turned to him. Despite the bruises on his face, he looked vaguely familiar. He was a guy from school. Xander suddenly realized that he was surrounded by Sunnydale High students.
Whoa, gluttony was big in the California public school system.
The guy said, “Why are you different from us?”
“Different?” Xander asked.
“Yeah. Look at me.”
Xander really looked. The guy was kind of half there, like a ghost, or a hologram. Xander could see the black stallion he rode right through him. And it looked like a regular carousel horse, not a frothing nightmare.
Xander hadn’t noticed that before. He was too busy getting tortured or something.
“Look at yourself,” the guy said.
Xander was nearly solid. Still a little blurry, but not like the other guy.
“How did you get here?” the guy asked him. “What ride were you on?”
“Ride?” Xander considered. “I wasn’t on a ride. I was sick, and I got put in something. I think it was a coffin.”
The guy said, “Well, I was riding this carousel. Only it wasn’t like this.”
“So was I,” said the girl on the other side of Xander. Her face was black-and-blue.
He realized he was beginning to see them more clearly. He was able to think, where before he had just plodded along.
Something was happening to him. Something that he thought might be good.
I’m getting better.
He yanked on the chain tied around his wrist.
&n
bsp; It broke with a clank.
In the center of the carousel one of the falcons on an outstretched arm jingled its bells and cocked its head. The hunter who held it frowned and swept his gaze out at the riders.
Xander swallowed hard.
The hunter moved back into position in a jerky, automaton motion. His face grew hard, and he looked like a statue.
I think that’s good.
Xander freed his other hand, grabbing the chain so it wouldn’t make a sound. As the girl and the guy watched in astonished silence, he reached across and pulled the girl’s left hand free of her chain. Her right was still tethered.
“Try it yourself,” Xander whispered.
She tried, but nothing happened. Same with the guy.
Xander leaned over and wrenched the guy’s right hand free. Then the guy’s left.
Others saw and moved their hands, straining against their chains. But they were held in place.
“How did you do that?” Snyder hissed, struggling against his own chains. Xander tried not to take satisfaction in that. It had to have something to do with the coffin, or the spells Cordelia had been talking about. Now he wished he’d been able to pay better attention.
“There was something about a warlock,” Xander told him in a low voice.
“Warlock? Are you insane?” Synder shot back. Xander waited to see if it occurred to Snyder that believing in warlocks was, at the moment, nowhere near the craziest aspect of their existence.
“Not so loud,” Xander cautioned him.
“Are you telling me what to do?” Snyder asked. His bloodshot eyes were so huge Xander half-expected them to fall out of his head. “You are a student!”
“Shut up,” Xander told him.
“What?”
Ignoring Snyder, Xander broke the chain around the girl’s right wrist, and she covered her mouth with both hands as if to keep herself from crying out. Xander motioned for her to put them down. There was no telling when an evil-statue-guy might notice.
“Oh, God, can you get us out of here?” the guy to Xander’s right whispered excitedly.
Then their attention was taken up when the threshers banged their drums and crashed their cymbals. The noise rang in Xander’s ears, until louder screams masked it. Something—someone?—appeared in the diorama. It was another Sunnydale High School student, a beefy guy in a letter jacket who, yeah, could very well have gluttony issues. He was on his hands and knees, looking around as he screamed, and Xander didn’t blame him because it was extremely terrifying simply watching the figures in the diorama as they lost their robotlike stiffness and began whaling on the guy with their drumsticks and cymbals.