by Nancy Holder
The vampire sorcerer glided to the high windows and looked out. In the darkness, it could see the silhouettes of its minions, the many vampires it had pressed into its service, as well as those it had caused to be created. Those that had already hunted and were sated for the night had gathered near the home of Weeping Willow, where their master resided, to pay homage to him until the dawn forced them to seek shelter.
Chirayoju had begun to build its army. A small force, true. But growing with each passing night. Or it would have been, if not for the damnable Vampire Slayer. As Chirayoju continued to gain strength, it would need more time to assemble its troops, not as in the days of old when it could command entire villages to rise up as one. But once it had reached its full strength, not even the Slayer would stop it from building a regiment of the dead large enough to enslave all the lands touched by the light of the moon.
A cold breeze whistled through the open window. It thought of the cherry blossoms on the mountains of Japan, and the beautiful trees that had once bloomed in the garden in Sunnydale. Even now, it saw their quivering phantoms, recalling its peace as it had sat among them, plucking from the earth a withered bonsai tree to begin its shrine in the girl’s room.
Willow’s mother knocked on the door. Chirayoju said, “Yes?”
“Honey, I’m … are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Chirayoju snapped. “Just tired.”
There was a pause. “You don’t seem yourself.”
Chirayoju crossed to the mirror on the wall and stared into it. Through the sheer force of its will, the girl’s features blurred and its own floated over them like a shimmering green diaphanous mask. It grinned at the fury it saw there. The unconquerable spirit. The vitality and strength of purpose.
“I am myself, Mom,” Chirayoju answered. “Who else would I be?”
Willow’s mother gave a short, awkward laugh. “I guess that’s the question most parents of teenagers ask themselves.”
She pushed the door open, came in, and sat on Willow’s bed.
“You were so cute and little when you were born,” she said wistfully. “I held you for hours, just staring down at you. I couldn’t believe how perfect you were. Your hands and feet. Each finger, each toe.”
The woman picked up a pillow and held it against her chest. “The first time you had a temper tantrum, I was so shocked. My perfect little baby! But I was proud of you too. You were becoming independent.”
She plucked at the corner of the pillow. “As soon as a baby is born, she spends her days learning how to leave her parents’ care. First she rolls away, and then she crawls away, and then she walks away.”
She sighed. “But I have hope that in the end, when she’s all grown up, she’ll come back. Not as my little baby, of course.” She smiled. “But maybe as my friend.”
Chirayoju stared at her. It couldn’t believe her utter weakness. Nor that she honestly believed that the parent, who should be idolized and worshipped as a god, could be looked upon with such lack of respect that he—or she—would be treated as a friend.
When it conquered this land, it would ensure that all such thinking was banished.
Even by the dead.
It smiled. “I hope that too, Mom,” it said.
She was alive only because as they entered the house, it had realized that if it murdered her, there would be an investigation. Because she was an adult, there would be too many questions. Already, the authorities were looking into some of the deaths it had caused—the holy man, the old lady killed by his minions. But the boy in the bushes was only a boy, and children died in all kinds of tragic and unexplained ways, even in these modern times.
In fact, especially in these modern times of drive-by shootings and incredible violence. And especially in this place, the Hellmouth, where evil flourished and grew.
So it was safe to kill the boy. He was disposable. And unnecessary to the furthering of its ambition.
Willow’s mother crossed to it and kissed it softly on her daughter’s cheek. It was very sorry that it could not kill her. Every time Weeping Willow heard her voice, she fought to regain possession of her being. Chirayoju found her struggles distracting and slightly tiring.
With time, it would obliterate her, and she would struggle no longer.
Outside, the boy’s heartbeat slowed even further.
Soon, very soon, his struggles would also end.
CHAPTER TEN
Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” Buffy said to herself as she checked her visual presentation in the girls’ bathroom. Around her, girls milled and talked about guys and clothes. The pleasant aspects of teenage-hood. And the not so pleasant: homework and fights with their parents.
The pleasant stuff she couldn’t really relate to. The other stuff, sadly, she knew all too well: Last night her mom had gotten a gander at her latest catch of “below averages.” And when she said, “Buffy, is this the way it’s always going to be?” Buffy tried to remember Angel’s lovely speech about how she was a mirror and her mom loved that mirror, but all it felt like was that she was in for seven years of really hard labor.
A few girls said hi to Buffy but no one really rushed over to get her autograph. She had no other real girl buds except for Willow. She missed Willow—her version of Willow, not the update, Will version 6.66—more than ever.
In fact, she sort of missed the way things had been when she’d first come to Sunnydale—the basic threesome of her, Willow, and Xander: the Three Musketeers, one for all and all for one. Now Willow and Oz were getting together, and Xander and Cordy were doing whatever it was they called it. Their friendships had changed, and that had changed their lives.
On the other hand, she had Angel. As if that weren’t weird enough.
But since she was the Slayer, relationships had to take a backseat. Top priority was figuring out who the new top vamp in town was. So far, she’d had no luck beyond being haunted by the idea that the lithe figure she’d seen in the cemetery the night before had been Willow.
She meandered out of the bathroom and was about to have a post-Starbucks, pre-first-period chat with Giles when Cordelia rushed toward her with her cell phone in hand. Buffy raised her brows and waited for whatever bombshell Cordy was about to detonate. Probably about the fact that her hair was “askew,” as Willow would put it. It was true: Bad hair day was upon the Slayer. Cordelia’s revelation would not be news.
Cordelia stopped short, looked left, right, must have decided none of the Cordettes could possibly witness her speaking to one of the untouchables, and rushed over to Buffy.
“Buffy,” she said, taking a breath, “Xander isn’t in school today. And neither is Willow.”
“Aha,” Buffy said slowly. “And you’re thinking what? Xander and Willow have eloped to Las Vegas?”
“I’m thinking, Miss Slayer, that I left Xander at Willow’s last night because he was all so worried about her, and now they’re missing.”
Buffy considered. “Given the fact that we live on the Hellmouth, and that Willow has been acting more like you than herself—”
“And that Xander and I have been, ah, meeting for breakfast every morning and he would have called if he had to skip … breakfast,” Cordelia insisted.
“Have you considered that maybe he’s mad at you and just blew you off?” Buffy suggested.
Cordelia rolled her eyes. “Trust me. Xander would not miss one of our … breakfast … meetings if he had a choice in the matter.” She huffed. “C’mon, Buffy, this is me we’re talking about. I mean, I know I feel like I must have done something horrible in a past life to be so completely unable to control my attractions, but Xander … Xander must feel like he’s won the lottery. He wouldn’t just not show.”
Hard as it was for Buffy to admit it, she did see Cordelia’s point. Xander was, after all, a guy.
“What did he say when you called him?” Buffy asked, looking down at Cordelia’s cell phone.
Cordelia looked as if Buffy had shot her. “When I called
him? Buffy, excuse me, I do not call boys. They call me.”
“Except if they’re dead,” Buffy said, letting her irritation show.
“Ooh.” Cordelia whipped open her cell phone and demon-dialed Xander’s number.
“I was changing my nail appointment, you know,” she said to Buffy, then blinked and nodded at Buffy. “Hello, Mrs. Harris?” she asked sweetly. “This is Cordelia. What? Cordelia Chase! Xander must have told you about … May I speak to Xander? What?” She looked stricken. “The police?”
“Oh my God,” Buffy whispered. “What? What?”
“Okay. Yes, of course. Yes, of course I do. I will. Good-bye.”
Cordelia whipped the phone shut and grabbed Buffy’s forearm. She had a surprisingly firm grip.
“Buffy, Xander never came home last night.” Her eyes were actually welling with tears. “His family thinks he might have been abducted or murdered or whatever, you know, with all these missing persons lately.” She pressed her fingertips against her eyelids and choked back a sob. “And if he’s dead, the last thing I told him was to stop moaning.”
Buffy took that in but moved on. “What about Willow? Call her house too.” Now Buffy was sorry she hadn’t gone ahead and phoned last night, no matter how late it had been.
Cordelia handed her the phone. “You. I don’t know her number.”
Buffy punched it in. Waited. There was no answer. She hit redial, in case someone in the Rosenberg household was on the other line. There was still nothing, not even voice mail. She traded stricken glances with Cordelia.
“Giles,” they said in one voice.
They raced to the library. “We’ll get him to cover for us,” Buffy said. “We can spend all day off campus without getting busted for anything. He’s got all these amazing hall passes they never tell us students about, Cordelia. Work furlough thingies or something.”
“I always knew this place was just a well-disguised prison,” Cordelia muttered. She skidded on the tiled floor. “Of course I had to wear heels today.”
Shoulder to shoulder, Buffy and Cordelia pushed open the double doors to find Giles speaking very seriously to Oz and handing him a large canvas sack that clanked as Oz took it. The two guys looked startled, then both relaxed.
“Hi, girls,” Oz said. “Just picking up the new and improved Oz-wolf restraint system.” He pointed moonward. “It’s that time of the month.”
“Oh.” Buffy nodded. “Werewolf time. Understood. Um.” Oz had recently learned that due to a little finger nip from his three-year-old nephew, he turned into a werewolf three nights of every month. Willow understood, which was very nice. In fact, all the Scooby Gang understood. It wasn’t his fault, and he never hurt anyone.
Oz peered at her. “Are you okay? Is everything all right?”
“Sure.” She smiled and elbowed Cordelia, who lit up like a Christmas tree.
“Everything is super-duper,” Cordelia assured him.
“I hope Willow gets over that stomach virus soon,” he said, and started to leave.
“Wait,” Buffy said urgently, grabbing his arm, then let go of him and cleared her throat. “You spoke to her?”
“Got an e-mail. See ya.”
Clank, clank, clank, he was out the door.
“If she’s sending e-mail, maybe she’s okay,” Cordelia said, at the same time that Buffy ran up to Giles and said, “You’ve got to cover for us. Xander and Willow are missing.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” he began, a worried expression on his face, “but what—”
“I’ll drive,” Cordelia said. “I’m the obvious choice.”
“Since you have the car, and a license, and y’know, know how … I’ll go along with that,” Buffy said. “Pit stop at my locker for my slayage stuff.”
They whirled and left. Behind them Giles called, “Yes, all right. But what’s going on?”
“Please don’t kill me,” Buffy murmured as they shot around the corner and headed down the straightaway toward Willow’s house.
“You sound just like Xander,” Cordelia said. “Only, I can understand it from him. He’s lived in Sunnydale all his life. Home of the five, count them, five, major traffic intersections. But you’ve lived in LA.”
“Just jumpy, I guess,” Buffy said. “And more aware that it’s possible to die at an early age.”
“Here we are.”
Cordelia slammed on the brakes just as Buffy, having been warned, rolled herself forward like you do when your 747’s going down. Cordelia sighed, irritated, but flew out of the car and chittered toward the walk in her very high heels.
Buffy, in knee-high boots, met her there, then stopped Cordelia from leaping onto the porch.
“We don’t know who or what is in there,” she whispered. “No one answered the phone.”
“Oh, right.” Cordelia was wide-eyed, excited and scared at the same time.
“Let’s look around first,” Buffy said quietly. “I’ll go left and you—”
“I’ll go left too,” Cordelia said firmly.
“All right. Stay behind me.”
Buffy hefted her Slayer’s bag, making sure she had both a stake and a cross within easy reach. It was the middle of the day, of course, but you never knew what you were going to run into in Sunnydale. She scrutinized the lawn as they tiptoed silently over it, seeing nothing that would cause any alarm.
They came to a cluster of bushes. Buffy parted the nearest one. Nothing. She moved to the next one and crept around it.
On the other side Xander lay, his face mottled and bruised, as still and white as death.
“Oh my God!” Cordelia shrieked.
The front door burst open and Buffy whipped around, stake in hand, ready for a fight.
Instead, she saw Willow’s mom in her chenille bathrobe, her eyes ringed as if she hadn’t had any sleep.
“Buffy, what’s wrong?” she cried.
“Mrs. Rosenberg, go call 911. It’s Xander.”
“He’s dead,” Cordelia wailed, throwing herself across Xander’s still form. “Oh my God!”
Mrs. Rosenberg started to go toward Xander, but Buffy took her firmly by the arm and led her into the kitchen. She took the portable out of its charger and punched in 911. “Where’s Willow?” she asked.
“She took off,” Mrs. Rosenberg said anxiously. “I’ve been hoping and praying for a call, but …”
“I called here about half an hour ago,” Buffy said.
“Emergency services,” the operator said.
“There’s been an accident,” Buffy announced. “Please send an ambulance.” She handed the phone to Willow’s mom to give out the particulars of her address. Buffy was so freaked out that she couldn’t remember Willow’s house number.
Then she flew down the hall and into Willow’s room while Mrs. Rosenberg dashed outside to check on Xander.
As Mrs. Rosenberg had said, the room was empty. The bed was unmade, and Willow’s stuffed animals lay in clumps on the floor. In twisted, headless clumps, Buffy noticed as she bent and examined one of them, a tiny white unicorn. A pencil had been driven through its chest.
Her hair stood on end. Her face was hot. Willow, what’s happened to you? she asked silently.
Then the computer announced, “You have mail.”
Buffy stood and walked to it. She clicked on Willow’s mailbox. It was from Oz.
Hope you feel better. Drink lots of liquids and take a lot of vitamin C, he had written. P.S. Luv ya.
So they were still in the puppy phase, not having progressed to the more committed conjugation of the verb, which was, I love you.
Next to the computer was a little dried-up bush. Buffy picked it up and examined it. It looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place where she’d seen something like it before.
Beside it lay a foreign coin. No. It was the disk Willow had accidentally knocked off the big Japanese sword on the wall. And beside that, a little green flower made of folded paper. Buffy stared at it a moment. Her heart pounding, she
unfolded it.
A siren blared outside. Red and blue lights strobed through the venetian blinds. The ambulance had arrived.
Buffy put the disk and the tree in her Slayer’s bag. As she moved from the room, she unfolded the note. It read, I’m sorry.
“The paramedics are here,” Mrs. Rosenberg called. “They’d like to speak to you, Buffy.”
Without speaking she nodded and dropped the note into her bag as well. She would show them to Giles.
Walking back down the hall, she stumbled and fell against the wall. She was trembling from head to toe, terrified for her friends. Tears streamed down her face. If she lost them, if she lost any of them because of who and what she was, she would never forgive herself. Ever.
Which is the burden Angel carries, she realized sharply. He had not only lost loved ones, he had killed them himself, and done it with a song in his heart, as he had once told her.
She shivered, pitying him beyond words.
Then she ran to the ambulance, following Xander’s gurney. He was strapped to the cot. Blood and liquids dripped into his right arm, and there was an oxygen mask covering his face.
“I’m going with,” Cordelia insisted, scrambling into the ambulance.
“Me too,” Buffy said.
Cordy sighed. “All right, I’m not leaving my car here, so we’ll drive.”
This ride in Cordelia’s car was significantly different. Not that Cordelia was any more cautious or skilled than before. But this time, Buffy said nothing. She was preoccupied with her fear. Fear that Xander could die, though it now seemed he would be all right with a transfusion and a few days’ bed rest. Fear that Willow might already be dead. All of it because she had not focused on finding the vampire that was organizing a new wave of horrors that swept across Sunnydale.
And now seemed to be focused on Buffy and her friends.
But there was another fear building inside Buffy. One that she wanted very much to push away, to ignore. Instead, it started to overwhelm her with its logic. Fear that she had seen Willow the night before, in the cemetery, silhouetted in moonlight. And now Willow was gone, and the note she had left behind was an apology. For what? Buffy thought she knew, and her suspicions made her sick and afraid.