by Nancy Holder
Tears welled in Buffy’s eyes as she panted, fighting to catch her breath. She said unsteadily, “Hurt her any more, and I’ll … I’ll …”
Chirayoju laughed. “There is nothing you can do, is there? Except for one thing.” It smiled. “I want your body, Slayer.”
She sneered at it. “Sorry, I’ve got a steady.”
Suddenly Chirayoju flew away from Buffy and focused its gaze on Angel. It said in a hypnotic voice, “You are now my slave, vampire. You will do as I say.”
Buffy gaped as Angel’s face grew slack and blank. His dark, intense eyes stared hard at the vampire demon. “You will begin to walk. You will walk until the sun comes up. And then you will die.”
“No!” Buffy shouted.
Chirayoju smiled at Buffy in victory. It said, “Thus will he die, along with the girl whose body you are killing.”
“Angel!” she cried.
“Don’t worry, Buffy, you’re not like other girls, and I’m not like other vampires!” Angel flew at Chirayoju and grabbed it around the neck. Angel bared his fangs, preparing to lower his mouth to Willow’s throat, growling savagely.
Chirayoju said to Buffy, “I will let him kill her.”
“Stop,” Buffy said tiredly. “Okay. You win. Angel, let it go.” Smiling grimly, she held out her hand. “Mr. Cheerios, congratulations. You’ve just won the big showcase on Let’s Make a Deal.”
“No, Buffy,” Angel said.
“Yes, Buffy,” Buffy replied unhappily. She said to the vampire, “Let me say good-bye to him.”
“No tricks,” it said suspiciously as Angel glowered at it.
“No tricks,” she assured it. “But I want something in return, or no deal.”
“You dare—,” it began.
“Shut up!” Buffy snapped. “You want my help? Then be quiet and listen. You don’t attack him or Willow after you take me over. That’s my condition.”
It paused. Considered.
“That is your sole condition?”
“I’d like to make a list, but I figure that’d be pushing it,” she retorted. Her heart was pounding. She was scared, but she wasn’t about to let it know that. And there were worse things than being possessed by ancient Chinese demon vampires.
There was always math.
“Agreed,” Chirayoju said. “I will not harm Weeping Willow, or the vampire you call your mate.”
“Well, not my mate, exactly,” she said, reddening as she glanced at Angel. “That sounds so … um, primitive.”
Angel pleaded, “Buffy, don’t do this.”
She walked a short distance away as Angel reluctantly let the demon go. Buffy touched the chain around her neck, tried to find the clasp without being obvious about it, and gave it a yank as Angel caught up with her.
Protectively, desperately, he put his arms around her.
“Buffy, you don’t know what it’s like to be taken over by evil,” he whispered. “I do. I can’t let you go through with this.”
“You don’t have a choice, Angel,” she said. “Please, just help me.”
She lowered her gaze to her fist. “It has a jones for this little disk thingy. Willow accidently knocked it off the sword just before she cut herself. I figure it helped set Chirayoju free. When it saw it around my neck, it got all hyper.”
She gathered the chain up in her fist and pressed it into his. Instantly, a look of pain crossed over his face. Her eyes widened and she glanced down, to see a small wisp of smoke trailing from his closed hand.
“Oh, the cross,” she said, remembering that she had been wearing the silver cross he had given her the first night they met. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He gave her a pained, crooked smile. “It’s a good kind of hurt.”
“Get it to Giles. He’ll know what to do. He’s like Scotty, you know, on Star Trek?” She paused. “Wow. You probably watched it when it first came on in the sixties.”
But Angel wasn’t swayed by her change of subject. “Buffy, please,” he whispered. “Don’t do it.”
She gazed up at him fearfully. She wondered if she would ever be in Angel’s arms again. She guessed he was wondering the same thing, because he looked very, very worried and held her too tight.
“Kiss me?” she whispered. “For luck?”
“I love you,” he murmured.
Their lips met. She wanted to fling her arms around him, but she held the kiss, feeling his mouth against hers, a coolness in the fever of her terror. To be possessed by evil … she couldn’t imagine a worse fate.
Except dying possessed by evil.
She was the first to pull away.
“Okay, Mr. Cheerios,” she said jauntily, “I’m ready.” She turned to face the monstrous evil as it glided up to her and grabbed up her hand. Its grip burned her as the cross must have burned Angel.
“Remember your promise,” she said, swallowing hard. “No running in the halls.”
“To the last, your weak and pointless jokes,” it said.
“Next stop, Comedy Central,” she replied unsteadily.
“Buffy,” Angel said. “Buffy, stop. Don’t go through with it.”
It straightened her fingers and sliced at its own cheek. “My blood,” it explained, smearing her hand against the wound.
“Willow’s,” Buffy said. “It’s Will—” She inhaled deeply as something rammed hard through her chest, knocking her completely senseless.
Then she was surrounded by screaming—agonized and hopeless screaming. It went on and on until she thought she wouldn’t be able to stand it for another second. Then it grew louder.
She heard Willow cry, “Buffy!”
Then she was burning up, standing inside a firestorm that ate away every inch of her being. She writhed as flames whooshed around her, burning through her lungs, her vocal cords, her ears.
She trembled, freezing, in utter silence. She looked left, right, but where she was, endless blackness stretched in all directions. She tried to move, but she was frozen to the …
to the …
to nothing.
She was utterly, vastly nowhere.
Somewhere, very far away, she heard a voice she once had known very well. With a laugh, it spoke:
“I have won.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Stop!” Angel roared.
Buffy stopped. Angel stood to bar her path and stared into her eyes. But she wasn’t there. Everything that was Buffy had disappeared from her eyes; the spark that was her soul was missing. Still there, he knew … from painful experience. But buried as deep as the worst of secrets.
“I vowed to the Slayer that I would not attack you,” Chirayoju said, Buffy’s lips forming the vampire’s words.
Vampire. Yes, but unlike any vampire Angel had ever faced. When it still wore its own flesh, Chirayoju must have been a great sorcerer. That was the only explanation Angel could imagine for the demon’s power. It was essentially a ghost, a bodiless demon spirit that, when merged with a human host, made a vampire. Just like him. But nothing like him at all.
“Let her go,” Angel demanded, aware that he also had to protect Willow, who was unconscious at his feet. Though Chirayoju’s own magickal self-preservation had healed her almost completely of the wounds she had received while possessed, she was completely drained of energy.
Chirayoju smiled, and the way its grin twisted Buffy’s face, it didn’t look like Buffy anymore at all. Which is good, Angel thought. That would make it easier if he had to kill her. As if anything could make that easy.
The smile broadened, and suddenly a moldy green face seemed to shimmer into being, covering Buffy’s features like a mask, though Angel could still see her through it.
This was Chirayoju’s true face, then. Angel’s lips curled back and his face changed as well, transforming into the savage face of the vampire within him. Chirayoju had made a mistake. If he’d kept using Buffy’s face, Buffy’s voice, Buffy’s perfect mouth to speak, Angel didn’t think he could ever have attac
ked.
But now he saw the face of the demon.
“I vowed I would not attack, but I said nothing about defending myself,” Chirayoju declared. “Stand aside, Angelus … yes, I know your name. I plucked it from the Slayer’s mind. Stand aside, or you will die your final death.”
Without Buffy, he had nothing to live for, but Angel stood his ground. Chirayoju moved forward, prepared to attack, then stopped suddenly. The green ghost face shattered, and Buffy’s eyes went wide. For a moment, Angel hoped that Buffy had driven the vampire out of her body, but no, the voice that came from her mouth was still not quite her own.
“I sense … something,” Chirayoju said. “But it cannot be. Not here.”
Then Angel sensed it too. A powerful new presence. He turned, ready to defend himself.
Then he saw who it was.
“Xander?” he called, staring at the new arrival. Xander had a huge old sword in his hands, and he marched into the dead garden with a wide grin on his face.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Angel asked. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”
Xander swung the sword up, held it in battle position. It was a very heavy-looking weapon, and yet he moved it as though it were plastic. Angel looked more closely at Xander’s face, at his strange smile. And then he knew.
This wasn’t Xander any more than the other creature standing in the garden was Buffy. He didn’t know who or what is was, but it wasn’t the mortal who laughed and joked and called him Dead Boy.
“Another one?” he whispered to himself.
“Chirayoju!” Xander roared, or whatever was inside him did. “Once again you defile the sacred soil of the Land of the Rising Sun! And once again, you will fall beneath my sword. So swears Sanno, the King of the Mountain!”
A powerful wind sprang up suddenly and whipped at Angel. The gale was so strong it almost knocked him back, but he leaned into the wind, trying to figure out what his next move should be. These two were obviously bitter enemies.
“Foolish little god,” Chirayoju snarled in return. “This is not Japan. The soil you stand on now may have been tilled by Japanese hands, but your nation—your mountain—is far from here. You stopped me once, but we have been locked in our bloody battle for many millennia now, and I have the measure of you, Sanno. You cannot defeat me here, on this dead patch of earth. Not when I wear the flesh of one who was already more than human!”
Chirayoju raised its right hand—Buffy’s right hand—and laughed deeply. Cruelly. “Time to die, old spirit. The time has come for you to be washed from the earth forevermore!”
As Angel watched them posturing, circling, sizing each other up in the Eastern tradition of combat, he clutched the disk Buffy had slipped him. He realized he was trapped in a horrible dilemma: If he helped Xander, then Buffy might be killed, and vice versa.
Chirayoju’s face changed yet again. The sparkle returned to Buffy’s eyes for just a moment.
“Xander!” Buffy’s voice cried. “No!”
Then it was gone, just as quickly. But Angel had seen it. And he knew that in her mind, in her soul, Buffy was fighting Chirayoju’s control. For a moment, while the vampire spirit was distracted, she had taken her body back. She was fighting.
And when the Slayer fought, the Slayer won. In the end. That’s why she was the Chosen One. Suddenly Angel had hope. It might be possible to keep them from killing each other after all.
“That’s it, Buffy, come on!” he shouted, moving toward Chirayoju, bending against the gale force winds. “Push him out. Take your body back! You can do it!”
Chirayoju sprayed spheres of flame from its palms, and they sizzled through the air toward Xander … toward the Mountain King. But the king brought up his sword to stop the flames, and the fire seemed to be absorbed right into the metal.
The sword pointed toward Chirayoju as Sanno stepped forward. Angel jumped between them, eyes darting back and forth between the two ancient spirits.
“Stop,” he said. “This battle serves neither one of you.”
He turned to stare into Buffy’s eyes, searching for her in there. Finding nothing.
“Out of the way, child,” Chirayoju thundered, and raised its hands again.
Angel was about to protest when a blast of fire scorched his back. It had erupted from Sanno’s hands, he realized as he arched with the pain. Then Chirayoju brought fire down upon him as well, and Angel fell to the ground, rolling in the dirt and the dead vegetation to douse the flames.
He grunted in pain as he stared up at Xander’s face. The spirit that possessed him clearly enjoyed his own show of power and Angel’s agony. It might be a battle of good versus evil, but he didn’t think Sanno was much better than Chirayoju. Not after thousands of years of hatred. Sanno wanted to kill his enemy, and it didn’t matter who died in the process. The Mountain King was arrogant and cruel, just like a vampire.
Any vampire.
The winds continued to howl all around Angel, kicking up dirt and uprooted plants. Angel slitted his eyes and began to sit up, wincing at the pain of his burns. But the pain was easy to ignore when he thought of what would happen if he didn’t do something soon.
Then, over the gale, he heard someone calling his name.
“Angel!” Willow cried again, desperate to understand what was happening all around her. She ached all over, but that was starting to go away. What still hurt was inside: the memory of having been taken over by something not very nice. The brief flashes of reveling in cruelty, of laughing at Buffy and Angel as they had fought her …
Then Angel was there, coat flapping in the wind, ignoring the grit that stung her own face and arms. He moved to her and lifted her easily, then ran a few yards to the small gully where water had once run. They ducked behind the cracked wooden bridge that ran over the gully.
Willow didn’t even have to ask what was happening. Part of her remembered. The rest of her just knew.
“Are you all right?” Angel asked.
There was an uncomfortable moment between them even as the battle raged not far away. Willow wondered how long that awkwardness would remain. Both of them were acutely aware that it wasn’t all that long ago that Angel had been trying to take her life, rather than save it.
“I’m alive,” Willow replied. “Alive is good.”
“You remember how you got here?” Angel said quickly.
Willow nodded unhappily.
“Well, something like it’s happened to Xander. That old Chinese vampire’s greatest enemy, the guy who defeated him the first time, has taken control of Xander. Buffy’s fighting for control of her body, but …”
Angel let his words trail off, and Willow felt a chill run all through her body. It was her fault. She’d been so obsessed with being more like Buffy … She should never have touched that sword!
But even as the thoughts entered her mind, she knew how foolish they were. There was no way she could have known what was going to happen. No, the only thing she had to concentrate on was how to save Buffy and Xander.
“They’re going to kill each other,” she said, softly enough that Angel couldn’t have heard her over the wailing of the wind.
“Do you remember any of what was in its head?” Angel asked, shouting over the roar of the storm. “Can you think of any way to stop it?”
“No,” Willow said, beginning to panic. She shook her head as she stared at the bizarre sight of Buffy and Xander stalking each other, clearly about to launch another attack. She saw the shimmering ghost-faces of the vampire and the Mountain King floating over their features, and that comforted her a little, helped her remember they weren’t really themselves.
She turned to Angel, frantic. “Can’t you do something?” she demanded. “I mean, come on! I know it’s in there, in you! Angelus is in there, and well, he’s pretty nasty and you could stop them if you really wanted to! Stop them from killing each other. There’s nobody else, Angel. It has to be you!”
Willow stared at him, her eyes pleadi
ng. When Angel glanced away, unable to meet her gaze, Willow sobbed loudly.
“I’m not Angelus anymore,” he said. “And if I were, all I would do is kill them both, and that isn’t really the outcome you’re hoping for, is it?”
When she shook her head anxiously, he drawled, “Didn’t think so.”
“I’m sorry,” Willow said meekly.
“Not as sorry as I am.”
“So we just let them fight?” Willow asked, wide-eyed.
“What else can we do?” Angel said, turning back to stare at the two figures battling in the moonlight. “I might be able to affect the outcome of this battle, maybe even restrain one of them … but not both, Willow, don’t you understand? The Mountain King isn’t going to stop until Buffy’s dead, and even if I could stop him, there’d still be Chirayoju to deal with.”
“But what about when it’s … when it’s over?” Willow persisted. “I mean, if the Mountain King kills Buffy, he might just go away, but if Chirayoju wins …”
Angel looked at her, and Willow knew she had never seen such sorrow in another person’s eyes. “If she wins,” Angel said grimly, “then I might just have to murder the one person I love in all the world.”
Both of them turned at the sound of Chirayoju screeching in a voice that once had been Buffy’s. The vampire sorcerer launched itself at Sanno. Twirling his sword over his head in great, swooping motions, Sanno charged at Chirayoju.
Then Chirayoju leaped into the air, shot flames at the Mountain King, executed a somersault, and landed on the other side of him. Fireballs erupted from the vampire’s hands and burned the air as they spat at Sanno, but the Mountain King deflected them with the wide blade of his ancient sword. The orange light reflected off Buffy’s features, giving her face combined with Chirayoju’s ghastly mask a hellish cast.
Then the two immortal enemies rushed at each other again. Their battle had lasted for thousands of years. Each truly had the same measure of the other. But when the battle was to the death, Willow knew there could be only one victor.