by Nancy Holder
But this … this was different.
With Xander’s mouth, Sanno, the King of the Mountain, screamed.
With Buffy’s mouth, the vampire sorcerer Chirayoju wailed in agony.
Xander tried to move, but he was frozen. His entire body was locked in place, the blade stuck inside Buffy, and she wasn’t moving either. It was, he thought, in a weird moment of clarity, like being electrocuted. Some kind of weird energy danced from Buffy to Xander and back again; a circuit had been set up between them.
No, Xander couldn’t move his body, but neither could Sanno. Nobody was in the driver’s seat now.
Buffy felt the pulling start, felt a horrible urge as blood rushed to the spot on her belly where the sword intruded. It was sucking at her, somehow. Inside her mind, Chirayoju screamed again, and then she knew what was happening.
The sword was dragging the vampire’s spirit back to its prison. Dragging … but dragging at her as well. And if Chirayoju wouldn’t let go, it would take Buffy instead.
Yessss! Chirayoju hissed inside her head.
I don’t think so, Myron, Buffy thought. You crashed this party, bud. I’m not going anywhere.
“Oh my God!” Cordelia cried. “Look at them! They’re, like, frozen, or something!”
“Buffy,” Angel whispered.
Willow tried to breathe. “This is bad.”
“Not necessarily,” Giles began, interrupting his chanting for a moment.
Angel saw Buffy move, just a bit. Half an inch. Obscured by smoke and what little remained of the fire. But when Giles stopped chanting, she—or Chirayoju—had started to move again.
When he turned on Giles, Angel was in full vamp mode.
“Giles, shut up and chant!”
He was relieved when Giles did as he demanded. He’d apologize later, if there was a later. For now, Angel thought he understood, just a little, of what Giles had been about to tell them.
“Come on.” Angel grabbed Willow and Cordelia by their hands and started running down the incline toward the burning circle of embers that had been a garden, once upon a time.
“Angel!” Cordelia pulled on his wrist. “Angel!”
“What?” He tugged at them both to get them to keep up with him.
“I’m barefoot!” she screeched.
Angel reached around and grabbed both girls around the waist. Then, one under each arm, he sprinted across the ashes into the circle where Xander and Buffy were still joined, paralyzed in their weird portrait of battle. Of murder.
“Willow, get behind Xander!” Angel barked, putting them both down. “Cordelia, you get behind Buffy. When I tell you to pull, pull on them as hard as you can!”
Willow frowned, puzzled. “But won’t that just start it all over again?” Willow asked.
Angel turned to meet her anxious gaze. “I’m going to be holding the sword. If Giles’s spell is working, which it seems to be, then maybe they’ll be trapped with it.”
Cordelia stared at him. “Maybe?”
“Just do it!” Angel said angrily. “It’s the only chance they’ve got.”
“Okay,” Cordy agreed instantly. “Just … Willow, be gentle with Xander, okay?”
Angel held the disk in his hand and stared at the odd inscriptions. He had no idea if this was going to work, but no time to worry about what might happen if it didn’t.
“Wait, Angel!” Willow wrung her hands and chewed her lower lip as she looked uncertainly up at him. “What if Chirayoju and Sanno are trying to escape? Won’t they try to go into you?”
“I’ve already got a demon in me, Willow.” He flashed her a self-mocking smile. “Remember? There isn’t room for another.”
“But what if the sword tries to pull you in too?” Cordelia asked.
Angel didn’t want to think about that, and he didn’t reply. He glanced at Willow, who always seemed so fragile, and saw so much strength there that he vowed never to underestimate the girl again. Then he glanced at Cordelia, and he realized that the same was true of her. As annoying as she could be, it was mostly just the way she had learned to be. But inside … well, she was here, wasn’t she? Ready to do whatever it took.
“Ready?” he asked.
Both girls nodded.
“One … two … pull!”
Angel grabbed the blade, its edge slicing into his palms. Xander and Buffy were torn away from the circuit, falling to the ground with Willow and Cordelia. Angel felt the electricity of the magick surge through him, into him … tugging at him.
Chirayoju and Sanno were there, inside the blade, and they were fighting still. As they had been for millennia. As he figured they would be until the end of time. And he had no desire to join them in the land of their hatred, the world inside that blade.
Fighting the pull of the sword, Angel held it up by its blade and stared at the hilt. He took the disk and placed it back into the slot from which it had fallen. Just as he realized he had no way to hold it in place, he felt a sharp tug at his sleeve.
Buffy.
Really Buffy, this time. Weak, pale, trembling—holding on to the bloody wound at her belly, the wound that had not closed up completely when Chirayoju had been yanked so unceremoniously from her body—but Buffy just the same. She held up to him a piece of cloth she had torn from the bottom of her shirt. Angel smiled and tied it around the hilt of the sword, holding the disk in place.
Still, the blade seemed charged with the hatred that lived inside it.
• • •
Buffy just wanted to sleep for about six months. That, and have somebody sew up the wound in her gut. Every inch of her felt bruised, the wound stung sharply, and yet, oddly, the places where she had been seriously injured before Chirayoju’s magick had healed her felt all tingly and new.
But it wasn’t enough that she’d been put through the wringer physically. She’d also ruined a brand-new top.
Then Angel looked at her, his eyes searing with his concern for her, and nothing else seemed important.
“I’m okay,” she said. “A quick trip to the ER, and I’ll be doing backflips in no time. Now, give me that,” she said, gesturing to the sword.
Angel handed her the heavy blade. Buffy held the Sword of Sanno with both hands above her right knee, took a breath, and then brought it down hard. Anyone else would have broken their leg. But Buffy Summers was the Slayer. The Chosen One.
The blade snapped in two.
“Now they’ll be fighting forever,” Willow said as she stepped up to where Buffy stood with Angel.
Xander and Cordy were right behind her, holding each other. “Sounds like another couple I know,” Xander said drily.
So, he was back to normal.
“Angel.” Giles panted as he rushed down the hill. “Thank God. You did it. You saved them.”
“Buffy put the final kibosh on them,” Angel said.
Willow pointed at Giles. “But if Giles hadn’t kept chanting …”
Buffy reached out to Willow, took her hand, squeezed it, and then dropped it again. She looked around, got a bit dizzy, and held on to Angel for support.
“Looks like we all had a part to play tonight,” Buffy said. “If any one of you hadn’t been here, this might have turned out very differently.”
“Yes.” Giles pushed up his glasses and wiped the beads of perspiration from his brow. “It might have turned out to be the longest night mankind has ever known.”
“It certainly feels that way.” Cordelia sniffed. “I just want to go home and … by the way, Summers, where’s my car?”
“I’m sure it’s around here somewhere,” Buffy replied, snuggling into Angel’s embrace, wincing at the pain in her abdomen.
“Buffy.” Willow reached for her friend. Buffy nodded back, giving her an I’m-going-to-be-fine look.
Xander cleared his throat. “Y’know, not that I’m not doing a little happy-to-be-alive dance—which, for those of you who don’t know it, is generally done with little in the way of actual pirouettes—but I’m a
little bothered by this whole Chirayoju thing.”
“Only a little?” Willow looked at him, a small smile on her face.
“No, really,” Xander argued. “I mean, don’t we have enough local vampires? Now we have to start importing them?”
“C’mon, Xander, haven’t you heard?” Buffy asked. “We live on the Hellmouth. This is, like, Disney World for vamps.”
“I’d hate to see Mickey,” Willow muttered.
“You’re missing the point, Will.” Xander pointed at a certain young Slayer. “To the vampires, Buffy is Mickey.”
And they went on that way, mixing their cartoon metaphors and generally making Buffy’s headache worse, until they had to split up to get to Giles’s and Cordelia’s cars. Buffy paused and then took Willow aside, away from the others.
“Are you okay?” she asked, when she and her closest friend were out of earshot of the others.
“You’ve got a hole in your stomach, and you’re asking me if I’m okay?”
Buffy looked at her gravely. “Will. Are you okay?”
Willow smiled sheepishly, shrugged a little Willow shrug, and nodded.
“I’ll be all right,” she replied. “I still think I should learn to fight a little better, but I doubt after the past week I’ll ever start thinking that being the Slayer would be a good thing. No offense.”
“None taken,” Buffy said, grimacing in pain. “Besides, if I’m going to be laid up for a night or two, Giles may need a little help out on patrol. And you know Xander … he’s a little distracted by that case of Cordy on the brain that he’s come down with. Somebody’s got to look out for him.”
Willow grinned, then helped Buffy over to Giles’s car.
In the back of Giles’s ancient four-wheeled monster, on the way to the emergency room, Buffy fell soundly asleep in Angel’s arms, a bittersweet smile on her face.
Bittersweet because she knew, even as she drifted off, that in the morning he’d be gone. But not forever. Not even for long. It was the curse of the Slayer, and the gift of her love for Angel, that the night would always come again.
And in the front seat, next to Giles, Willow felt a curious lightening inside her, as if the heaviest of burdens had been lifted. Giles must have noticed, for he cocked his head, half taking his eyes off the road, and said quietly, “Willow?”
“You know,” Willow said, “it’s a lot of work and everything, fighting the forces of darkness on such a regular basis. But I think if we all stick together, we just might win.”
Giles smiled. He was the luckiest of men.
And the most fortunate of Watchers.
“Bravo,” he whispered, and drove on.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Nancy Holder has published more than seventy-eight books and more than two hundred short stories. She has received four Bram Stoker awards for her supernatural fiction. Among her books for Simon Pulse, she is the coauthor of the New York Times bestselling Wicked series and the Once upon a Time novels The Rose Bride and Spirited. She lives in San Diego with her daughter, Belle, their two cats, and their two Corgis. Visit her at www.nancyholder.com.
In addition to One Thing or Your Mother, Kirsten Beyer is the author of Star Trek Voyager, String Theory: Fusion; the Alias APO novel Once Lost; and contributed the short story “Isabo’s Shirt” for the Distant Shores Anthology.
Kirsten has appeared in the Los Angeles productions of Johnson over Jordan, This Old Planet, and Harold Pinter’s The Hothouse, which the LA Times called “unmissable.” She also appeared in the Geffen Playhouse’s world premiere of Quills and has been seen on General Hospital and Passions, among many others.
Kirsten has undergraduate degrees in English literature and theater arts, and a master’s of fine arts from UCLA. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, David, and their very fat cat, Owen.
Christopher Golden is the award-winning, bestselling author of such novels as Of Saints and Shadows, The Myth Hunters, and Soulless. A lifelong fan of the “team-up,” Golden frequently collaborates with other writers on books, comic books, and scripts. During his tenure with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, he wrote or cowrote more than a dozen novels, several nonfiction companion books, dozens of comics (including the comics-writing debuts of Amber Benson and James Marsters), and both Buffy video games. Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. His original novels have been published in more than fourteen languages in countries around the world. Please visit him at www.christophergolden.com.