Buffy the Vampire Slayer 3

by Nancy Holder

  “‘Attend the Lords of France and Burgundy!’” came the deep bass voice of Lear. The vampire strutted onto the stage in full Shakespearean costume.

  Buffy might have laughed if not for the lives that hung in the balance. Instead, she looked at Giles for some kind of understanding. After all, the only Shakespeare she knew was that rock-and-roll Romeo flick with Leo and Claire Danes. Well, that, and the one Mel Gibson did. Her mom had insisted on renting that one. Not bad. “Lear’s first line in King Lear,” Giles whispered to her.

  Buffy watched Giles for a moment as he muttered to himself as though he were trying to remember song lyrics. On the stage, Lear walked into the spotlight, staring out at the “audience” but not even glancing down at Buffy and Giles.

  “‘I shall, my liege!’” Giles shouted suddenly, making Buffy jump. Onstage, Lear smiled.

  “‘Meantime’”—Lear smiled smugly, so pleased with himself he was practically drooling—“we shall express our darker purpose.’”

  At that cue, the second curtain began to draw apart behind the corpulent vampire, and Buffy couldn’t stop the gasp that escaped her lips as she saw Xander and Cordy. They were both gagged, and locked into a wooden contraption that snapped down over their wrists and necks, leaving them completely helpless. Maybe it had been a stage prop, once upon a time. But right now, it was all too real.

  The worst part was, they were awake. Buffy could see their eyes, and though both of them had seen a lot since the Slayer had come into their lives, she could tell that they were terrified.

  “Oh, my,” Giles murmured.

  “‘Is man no more than this? Consider him well,’” Lear roared madly.

  A chill ran through Buffy. She’d thought Lear was just a cruel moron. But that was wishful thinking. The only thing worse, in her opinion, than a fat, slobbering, undead, bloodsucking show-off was one who was also completely out of his head, a few bricks shy of a mausoleum.

  She saw rustling behind Xander and Cordelia, where the backstage curtains hung. There were other vampires there, she knew—others who followed Lear. But she didn’t know how many.

  A quick glance at Xander’s face, at the fear in Cordelia’s eyes, and Buffy realized it didn’t matter how many. But what could she do? How could she get to Lear before he could get to the rack Xander and Cordy were trapped in?

  Suddenly, Giles began to applaud.

  • • •

  Willow followed Angel up the stairs that led to stage left. They had discovered a tunnel that ran under the stage from one side to another, which would allow actors to move from side to side without disturbing the stage crew. She’d been certain they’d find some vampires in it, but, so sad, no joy.

  Not that there was any shortage of vampires. From stage right they’d seen at least six of them, lurking behind various curtains and offstage in the wings, working pulleys to open curtains and move props.

  Willow shivered. She hated vampires. Well, present company excluded, of course, despite the fact that Angel had tried to kill her once. Well, tried to kill them all. But that hadn’t really been Angel, that … made her head hurt to think about.

  Angel glanced back at her as if he could read her mind, and she offered him a helpless, why-me smile. Frankly, she didn’t know why he’d agreed to let her tag along. She didn’t have a clue why Buffy even wanted her around when it came to stuff like this. Giles knew his stuff, and he was the Watcher, after all. Xander at least could fight. Angel was Buffy’s boyfriend, and there was that whole thing about him being a vampire—but the only good vampire they’d ever heard of.

  Not to say Willow hadn’t held her own before, for at least seven or eight seconds. She had. And she wanted to be there, in a kind of Three Musketeers solidarity thing kind of way. But once the research was done, she’d already served her purpose in the little cadre of Friends of Buffy that Xander affectionately referred to as the Scooby Gang.

  Willow, sad as she was to admit it, was Velma. The brainy but relatively useless one. And she hated being Velma.

  She sighed as she followed Angel into the rows of curtains that hung in the wings at stage left. Willow had a stake, but that was more for protection than offense.

  There was a thump ahead of her, and the curtains swayed. Angel peered around them, his serious, soulful eyes—and wasn’t that ironic, soulful?—making her feel a little safer. He motioned for her to follow.

  Clawed hands grabbed him around the throat and drove him hard to the floor. The vampire on Angel’s back was leaning forward, trying to rip out Angel’s throat, when Willow moved in to stake it. She didn’t see the willowy blond vamp girl coming at her until the last second, and then she got the stake up just in time to have it knocked from her hands. The vampire girl reached for Willow, but she ducked, pulling the curtains between herself and her attacker.

  That bought her three whole seconds. Then the vampire girl was there again, smiling at her—until the one who’d attacked Angel body-slammed her to the ground. Only when Willow saw Angel going after them did she realize what had happened.

  No second-string vampire was going to take Angel out of the game.

  Willow shook herself. Sports analogies, she thought. I must be in shock.

  Angel made short work of the two vampires. But there were at least two others, possibly three, making their way across the stage behind the backstage curtain. Onstage, things had gotten way tense. Buffy had to do something, or Lear was going to kill Xander and Cordelia.

  Willow and Xander had been best friends since forever. She just couldn’t let that happen. She looked down at a pile of old, dusty props. Flagpoles, broomsticks, wooden swords, chairs, a wooden cart … a three-foot metal crucifix.

  With two quick strides, she bent to pick up a wooden sword and threw it to Angel.

  “Help Buffy,” she said.

  Angel looked at her, frowned, glanced at the curtains moving as the vampires came across the stage—obviously too terrified of upsetting their master to disturb his performance—and then he ran out on the stage, holding the wooden sword in front of him as though he knew how to use it. Which, given the fact that he grew up in the eighteenth century, Willow figured he probably did.

  Willow picked up the huge metal crucifix. She was Jewish, of course, but she figured that, hey, whatever worked. It was heavy, but the weight felt good in her hands. She tried to make herself feel tough, tried to look mean. Tried to be more like Buffy.

  • • •

  It all happened quickly for Buffy. One second, Giles was applauding, and Lear had a supremely pompous, pleased grin on his face. He was playing them like a total media harlot, and their job was to adore him. Giles’s applause had him so slaphappy, Lear actually stepped forward and executed a deep bow.

  Idiot.

  Buffy took three strides, put her foot on the armrest of a front-row chair, and did an aerial somersault to land behind the obese vampire on the stage. She’d put herself between her friends and death.

  That was where she belonged.

  That was why she was the Slayer.

  “No curtain call for you, Urkel,” she sneered. “I may not know Shakespeare, but I’m pretty sure this is not his proudest moment.”

  Unfortunately, Lear was faster than he looked. He batted the stake from Buffy’s hand, grabbed her by the throat, and lifted her high off the stage, fury burning in his eyes.

  “Everybody’s a critic,” he growled.

  Buffy grabbed his wrist and kicked him hard in the face, and Lear dropped her, howling in pain and humiliation. She scrambled to her feet, trying to stay between Xander and Cordelia and the raging vampire. Problem was, she had no stake.

  “Buffy!”

  Angel’s voice. Behind her.

  Lear dove for her, Buffy sidestepped, brought a knee up into his ample belly, and spun around behind him. She chanced a look up. Angel had smashed Xander and Cordelia free, and they were already moving to help Willow hold off the three other vamps who’d come from backstage. Then she saw what An
gel held in his hands. A long wooden sword. He threw it to her just as Lear barreled at her again, all pretense at sanity gone. Buffy had to jump to grab the sword’s hilt in the air. When she came down, she dropped to her knees and turned the point of the sword straight for Lear’s oncoming girth.

  The sword slid into him, and Lear staggered, a step forward, a step backward. She hadn’t pierced his heart, at least not completely.

  “Giles!” Buffy shouted. “Stake!”

  “‘Fortune, good night,’” Lear croaked. “‘Smile once more. Turn thy wheel.’”

  The vampire collapsed forward onto the stage, wrenching the sword upward in his chest. He burst into a huge cloud of ash, a spray of dust that flittered to the stage and then was still.

  In the front row, Giles tsk-tsked. “King Lear,” he said. “King of melodrama is more like it. Had to overplay it, right to the end.”

  “Oh, wonderful,” Xander said with his usual sarcasm. “I hope I gave my performance just the right note of terror for you, Giles.”

  “Okay,” Buffy interrupted. “Enough with the dramatic metaphors, now. It’s getting a little tired.”

  “So am I,” Willow agreed. “Good thing it’s not a school night.” Cordelia and Xander exchanged a glance.

  “Think the Bronze is still open?” Cordelia asked.

  “Perchance,” Xander replied, feigning a bad Shakespearean accent. “Prithee escort me, thou fairest maiden.”

  “Whatever that means!” Cordelia snapped. She rolled her eyes and strutted up the aisle and out the door. Xander followed.

  “You’re welcome!” Buffy called.

  “Come on,” Angel said, sidling up next to her and putting his arm around her waist. “I’ll walk you home. The streets of Sunnydale aren’t safe after dark.”

  Twenty minutes later, Willow was almost home. Giles had offered her a ride, but she’d sort of half-lied and told him she had a way home. Which was true. Walking was a way.

  She wanted to walk and think and come down off the adrenaline rush of playing Slayerette, which was, like, one of the Slayer’s backup singers. Or whatever.

  It was intense and cool and all of those things. It was also necessary. Since Willow knew that Sunnydale was built on top of the mouth of Hell—which made it kind of a hot spot for things that went bump in the night—she kind of felt like she had to do something about it. Like Spider-Man always said, “with great power comes great responsibility.”

  And Willow knew better than anyone that knowledge was power.

  At the end of the day—or night, as it were—Willow didn’t really mind being backup. She could sometimes be effective backup, like tonight. Which was fine. At least she wasn’t the Slayer. Willow couldn’t even imagine the pressure of being the Chosen One, whose job it was to save the world from the forces of darkness.

  If the pressure of being the Slayer wasn’t enough, there was that whole staying-alive thing, too. Trying not to get as dead as the guys you were killing. Who were already dead. Or undead. So staying alive was sort of important.

  “I need sleep,” Willow said to herself.

  Which was when powerful hands grabbed her from behind and swung her sideways into the brick side of Mona Lisa’s Pizza. With a gasp, she whirled around, facing her attackers. They were two guys, their faces shadowed. Both were tall and muscular, one in a jeans jacket, the other wearing a dark blue sweatshirt.

  Attack, she told herself, but she just stared at them helplessly. She couldn’t even make herself scream. She was frozen on the spot and she just stared at them.

  With a low, mean laugh, the one in the jeans jacket took a step toward her. It was then that Willow collected her wits and started to run.

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” he said.

  Thick arms trapped her and drove her to the pavement. Willow’s head hit the ground too hard, and her wrist was trapped beneath her.

  She felt something in her wrist give way, just before the darkness claimed her.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Monday morning. The words alone were enough to send tremors of fear shuddering through even the most stalwart of students. And the adults thought they had it hard!

  Still, despite the awful Mondayness of it all, it was a gorgeous morning. Birdsong filled the air. The scent of flowers floated in from a nearby garden. The sun shone brightly down, sparkling on the windows of Sunnydale High. It was almost enough to make you forget you lived on the Hellmouth.

  Almost, but not quite.

  Fortunately for them, most of Sunnydale High’s students didn’t know they lived on the Hellmouth. In blissful ignorance, they went on wasting their lives—a full-time job for a teenager, especially if you wanted to be really good at it. Kids were boarding down the sidewalks—which was illegal even if skateboarding had never been, was not now, and would never be a crime—and palavering about their weekends and their homework and doing all those fun teen-things that most high school students got to do on a much more regular basis than the Chosen One.

  As for that Chosen One, Buffy was quaking with fear. A little. As much as the Slayer ever quaked. But it wasn’t vampires or demons that had her sweating the day ahead. Uh-uh. This was much worse.

  Math test. Today. No studying. Bad equation. And it wasn’t like she could show up with a note from the vampire community. “Please excuse Buffy from her test today. She was busy out on Slayer patrol last night, keeping the world safe from dead folks.” Yeah, that’d go over big.

  No. She was doomed.

  “And how would you like your stake?” she grumbled.

  “Buffaleeta!” Xander cried, screaming up beside her on his board. He braked and hopped off, then brought his foot down onto the front and flipped it into his grasp in exactly the same way Buffy stomped crossbows into battle position. Despite her math tremors, Buffy grinned. Her buds had most definitely picked up a few tricks from watching her. Which was good, given the fact that being her friend put them in danger on a regular basis.

  “Heya,” she said. “Where’s Willow?”

  He inclined his head, arched an eyebrow. “Fine, and you?”

  “My bad.” She made a little I’m-sorry face. “It’s just that you two usually show up on school days as a matched set.”

  “Joined at the hip, like Siamese twins. That’s me and Will. Sadly, I had an errand to run this morning, thus causing my solo-ness.”

  “An errand?” she pressed, intrigued. Who did errands before sunrise? Besides vampire minions, that is? “Like what, Boy Wonder? You had to drop your bat cape off at the cleaners?”

  “That would be my Robin cape.” He looked at her sternly and wagged his finger at her. “Tsk-tsk, Slayer. How are you going to get invited to all the cool parties if you can’t keep your pop culture minutiae straight?

  “Actually,” Xander drawled, “the blame for my lateness rests firmly on the shapely shoulders of the conniving Catwoman!”

  “Not Catwoman?” Buffy gasped. “That cheap hussy!” She arched an eyebrow as he had done. “We done with the Batman shtick now?”

  He pointed slightly to the left of the swarm, at that familiar figure with the trendoid clothes, accent on upscale, and every single brunette hair exactly where it had been ordered to be.

  “And speaking of cheap hussies,” he said, “there’s mine.”

  Cordelia Chase turned, registered their approach, and launched herself in their direction. It was clear she had something that she considered important to discuss.

  “Now my morning is complete,” Buffy said, sighing. “A Xander spouting nonsense, a math test, and a chance to be insulted by the why-are-you-dating-her-again girl, all in one day. How can one simple girl have so much?”

  As Cordelia drew near, Buffy saw the concern on the girl’s face and rolled her eyes. “It’s probably my fault that she broke a nail or something.”

  “It’s just that crazy life you lead,” Xander drawled.

  “I need to talk to you guys!” Cordelia said hurriedly, glancing around, obviously hoping
she wouldn’t be spotted talking to them by any of her friends.

  “Cordy,” Xander greeted her brightly, “what’s the haps? Crush any young male egos yet today?”

  “No.” She grimaced at him.

  “Well, no need to fear, the day is young,” he said cheerily.

  Cordelia rolled her eyes. “Whatever.” She turned to Buffy. “Listen, I just want to know if there are any bizarre events planned for next weekend—you know, like if it’s Curse of the Rat-People Night or anything. I have plans next Saturday, and I do not want them ruined just because some monster who’s been trying to kill the Slayer for a thousand million years decides that would be the perfect night to rise from its grave.”

  “Yeah, Buffy, break out your Calendar of Dreadful Events, just make sure that night is clear for Ms. Chase, would you?” Xander snorted, and glanced at Cordelia. “Do you think Buffy plans these things?”

  Cordelia squinted at Buffy with intense irritation. “You know, when you first came to Sunnydale, I tried to bring you into the elite circle. But no, you had to hang with the losers. Don’t you ever wonder what might have been?”

  It amazed Buffy that after all this time, Cordelia still had the ability to hurt her feelings. But she did have that power, and she also had the skill. Because yes, Buffy did wonder what it would have been like to be popular at her new school. She missed having lots of friends and getting invited to the good parties and all the same things she had started missing once she found out back in LA that she was the Slayer. It was an occupational hazard, and not one any seventeen-year-old girl would cheer about.

  But she knew Cordelia was specifically referring to the fact that Buffy had dared to be nice to Willow when Cordelia had, frankly, treated her like dirt, publicly humiliating her and bullying her. By being friendly to Willow and asking her for homework help, Buffy had sealed her own fate as an outcast. As for that other “loser,” Xander, he came with the package, since he and Willow had been best friends since preschool.