by Nancy Holder
Then she heard the whimpering.
And the slurping.
Buffy turned on her flashlight and held it high above her head.
Five vampires, five human victims pinned beneath them. The vamps raised their faces and hissed at her. One of them was the fang-boy who had offered her a truce. Blood glittered on his lips.
“We meet again, Obi-Wan,” Buffy said to him, reaching into her Slayer’s bag. She brought out a cross and a stake. “Let’s rumble.”
“Get her!” the lying vampire shouted, and they moved toward her as one, a wall of living darkness.
Upstairs, the door slammed.
CHAPTER THREE
Willow glanced at the door to the Bronze’s basement. Buffy had gone down there after some vamp tramp several minutes earlier and hadn’t reappeared. “Maybe we should go after her,” she suggested.
Xander pressed his lips together as he considered it. He raised his eyebrows. “She did tell us to stay here,” he said. “You know how cranky Buffy gets when we ignore the Slayer’s apprentice guidelines.”
“She just worries about us, Xander,” Willow said. “Buffy’s all souped up with Slayer superpowers or something. We’re just normal.”
“Bite your tongue!” Xander scolded.
“Whatever,” Willow said. “You know what I mean. Sometimes we can help, sometimes we’re a handicap. Vampires don’t spot you points for having your friends along. How many times did Superman almost die because he had Jimmy and Lois to worry about?”
“Wait, am I Lois or am I Jimmy?” Xander asked.
Willow glared at him.
“All right,” Xander surrendered. “I get it. But is this one of the times we can help or one of the times we’d be cramping her style?”
They looked at each other, then turned and stared at the door.
“That’s the big question,” Willow admitted.
Silence reigned for a sprinkling of seconds. Outside, the wind had suddenly died down. They glanced at each other again, and Willow opened her mouth to say something but changed her mind.
“What?” Xander asked.
“Nothing.”
“Something. What?” Xander prodded. “Come on.”
“I think we should go after her,” Willow suggested. “She could be in real trouble. If we don’t look out for her, nobody else will. They all think she’s psycho anyway.”
“Right,” Xander grumbled as he pushed off from his stool and headed for the basement door with Willow in tow.
A second later their path was blocked. Willow thought the blond guy in the cowboy getup was a total honey. He had these sideburns that were very out of date but made him look steamy anyway. His eyes were a cold blue like nothing Willow had ever seen.
“Want to dance?” he asked, and Willow had to look around to make sure he was talking to her.
She grinned. So wide it hurt. Willow was about to say “Why not?” when she caught sight of the girl next to the smoking blond guy. She was dressed Old West trampy, a saloon girl to go along with Blue Eyes’s cowboy outfit. Long red hair usually only found on TV. Eyes like chocolate. Eyes only for Xander. Willow liked Xander; Willow did not like the way this girl was looking at Xander, or the way Xander was looking back. For a moment, Blue Eyes was forgotten as Willow tried to think of something witty to say to distract Xander from this girl.
The girl was wearing chunky Mary Janes, which were way over. Too dramatically unhip even for someone as I-don’t-care-about-hip as Willow. Guy with sideburns. Girl with Mary Janes.
“Xander,” Willow said, and whacked him on the arm.
“Yeah,” he answered, but didn’t look away from the redhead.
“Xander,” she said again. “I think this pair is a little too old for us.”
“What?” he asked, turning to stare at her as if she were a psychonaut, somewhere in mental space.
Willow grabbed his arm, stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. “They’re dead, you moron.”
As Xander and Willow turned to examine the pair who’d started to hit on them, the two vampires grinned widely. Willow was sort of proud of herself, and relieved, at the same time that she was pretty wigged out. Maybe Buffy’s undead radar was starting to rub off, or at least some of her fashion sense.
“Well?” said Blue Eyes, staring at Willow as if she were filet mignon. “Do you want to dance, or not?”
“That’d be option number two: not.”
“Yeah, clone that for me,” Xander agreed. “Sorry.”
Xander and Willow began to move away, but almost as soon as they turned, the vampires slid up next to them. Blue Eyes grabbed Willow’s arm tight enough to cut off circulation, and she could see that Red had done the same to Xander.
“We’re all leaving now,” Blue Eyes whispered to her. “Together. Out the front door. Scream, and we’ll kill you here and now.”
“Or later,” Willow suggested nervously. “Later would be a big improvement on that idea. We could meet back here in, say, an hour, and you can exhibit your homicidal tendencies then, okay? That would be way better for us.”
“Shutting up would be better for you,” Red hissed at her as she strong-armed Xander toward the door.
“Okay, extreme time out here,” Xander said loudly, drawing attention.
Red spun him around and practically spat in his face. “Another word and you’re dead. We do not bluff.”
“Okay,” he muttered. “I can totally see that, but you two are making such a ginormous goof here, and I thought I’d help you out before you ended up on the end of a stake.”
“Mistake,” Willow agreed, hoping Xander knew what he was doing. “Huge. Fatal. Hope your insurance is all paid up.”
Blue Eyes held her wrist so tight Willow gritted her teeth waiting to hear the snapping of bones. It didn’t happen. Oh, joy. All her limbs would remain intact until Blue Eyes sucked her dry.
“What are you two bloodbags talking about?” Blue Eyes demanded.
“Well,” Xander said, still quietly, not wanting to rush head long toward death, apparently. “See, it’s like this. You both seem like nice bloodsucking fiends, and you,” he indicated Red, “are better looking than any girl who’s ever even spoken to me.”
Red actually looked pleased.
“But, sad to say, we’re with the Slayer,” Xander went on. “And she’s forbidden us to hang with you guys.”
Blue Eyes and Red looked as if they’d each been slapped.
“The Slayer?” Red whispered.
“That’s right,” Xander continued. “So, y’know, I don’t think you want to get all fang-ugly on us, right? Maybe if you scurry off right now, the Chosen One will spare your nasty selves until tomorrow night.”
Blue Eyes and Red stared at them for several seconds, then exchanged an anxious glance.
“You have not seen the last of us,” Blue Eyes vowed before the pair of vampires drifted off into the masquerade crowd.
“Promises, promises,” Xander said, sighing.
“You behave now,” Willow called after them. “Don’t bite anyone I wouldn’t bite.”
She stood beside Xander and watched until the two Old West–costumed vampires were lost from sight.
“Well,” Xander said, “that was interesting.”
“Quite,” Willow replied. “Good job, Xander.” She wiped her forehead. She didn’t know about Xander, but she’d been really sweating. “Maybe we should wait for Buffy after all?”
“Waiting.” Xander nodded eagerly. “Original concept. Tremendous idea.”
In the basement of the Bronze, Buffy stood her ground as five vampires—three guys and two girls—got up off the costumed teenagers they’d been using as unwilling blood donors. She glanced over at the victims and was relieved to see that, though either unconscious or way disoriented, they all seemed to be breathing.
Thank God for small respiratory favors.
“You’ve come at a bad time, Slayer,” hissed the vampire with whom she’d agreed to a truce not hal
f an hour before.
“I know, I know, you would’ve baked a cake. Well, I’m way sorry to interrupt the suckfest,” Buffy sneered, “but haven’t you leeches ever heard of the Red Cross?”
“Cold, lifeless blood,” one of the vamp chicks growled. “We do not ask for our food, the warmth and life, we take it!”
“Take it?” Buffy chuckled. “You couldn’t take a hint, never mind get a clue or buy a vowel.”
The female vampire’s face morphed into the typical extreme ugliness of her kind—like a Klingon burn victim with fangs. She roared and launched herself across the basement at Buffy. The Slayer waved her thick cross in front of her, and the other four vamps stayed back. Still, the first continued to rush forward.
“I don’t believe in your God, Slayer!” the thing roared.
Buffy had the stake in her left hand and the cross in her right. When the vampire was almost on her, she ducked under its outstretched arms and slammed a hard uppercut to its gut, not bothering to use the stake for the moment. The vampire was stopped short, bent slightly, and Buffy brought her boot up into its face, knocking it over on its back. She straddled the fang-girl and sat down on her chest, all the time keeping the four other vamps in her peripheral vision. They were afraid of something—her or the cross, it didn’t matter. Keeping them back was the key.
“Doesn’t matter if you believe in God,” Buffy said grimly as the groggy vampire began to struggle to rise. “He believes in you.”
She slammed the cross down on the vampire’s face, and it burst into flame. Two of the other vamps shrieked. Buffy staked the fang-girl in the heart, and she exploded into blood-scented ashes.
“Better get the dustpan,” she muttered as she stood and stared at the other four.
“Slayer,” the liar began, glancing nervously at the crucifix in her hand, “perhaps we could discuss a truce again.”
“Yeah, y’know, we could talk about that,” Buffy began reasonably. “We could, maybe, have peace negotiations and . . . well . . . why not?”
The vampires stared at her.
“Really?” the liar asked.
“No.” Buffy smiled. “Not really.”
The liar began to growl, majorly pissed off at Buffy’s mockery of him. The others began to creep forward, eyes on the cross.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Buffy said innocently. “If this thing is giving you guys a wiggins, I’ll just put it aside until we’re through.”
To the obvious astonishment of the undead, Buffy threw the cross on the cement about halfway between them. It clattered to the ground and stayed there.
“Now, unless you guys have some major elsewhere to be, why don’t we fast forward to the juicy bits so I can return to my loitering amongst the tragically hip?” Buffy asked, switching the stake to her right hand.
A smile spread across the liar’s face.
“Destroy her!” he shouted.
The four vamps rushed her together. Buffy crouched and then launched herself high in the air—higher than a normal teenage girl would have been able to jump, but then, as Buffy often said, normal was overrated. She grabbed hold of the thick copper cold-water pipe running across the ceiling of the basement, swung her legs, and tucked her head into a somersault. She spun in the air and landed on her feet, facing the backs of the four vampires.
They turned quickly to face her, but she’d thrown off the focus of their attack. Buffy leaped again, into a high roundhouse kick that nearly snapped the neck of a fang-boy. He spun into another vampire and Buffy went after them. She grabbed the vamp she’d kicked around the neck, choking him, and used him as a shield as she rammed the stake into the other’s chest. Even as the vamp disintegrated, she staked the creature she’d kicked, and it disintegrated too.
“No more shield, no more games,” the liar on her right sneered, and Buffy spun to face him. The only other surviving vampire, a fang-girl, was behind her now, but she could almost sense the undead thing’s presence. Maybe her vampire radar was actually starting to work? Or it could just have been the glare from the vamp chick’s screamingly tacky fashion sense.
“Maybe this is, like, Scrabble for you,” Buffy snapped. “To me it’s more like pest control.”
“Vermin,” the liar snarled.
“That is so my point,” Buffy replied . . .
. . . then backed up a step and used both hands to plunge the stake under her left armpit right into the fang-girl who’d been about to rip her throat out from behind.
“Liar, liar,” Buffy chided, and brought the stake in front of her again.
She was gaining a reputation as the Slayer. The creatures of darkness were wary of her. Buffy knew it would help her, give her an edge, to have them fear her. But she couldn’t afford to get all celebrity arrogant about it. There were no paparazzi for Slayers. If she let it go to her head, she’d be over, a ridiculous punchline. She’d be dead.
The liar might be nervous around her, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t deadly.
They circled each other as if they were acting out that fine drama known as professional wrestling. The liar ran his tongue across his bloodstained fangs.
“Y’know, they’ve got this way cool new invention called Crest,” Buffy taunted him. “Give it a try. I’ll bet you’d have a killer smile.”
“That is the last time you’ll mock me, Slayer,” the liar declared.
“For once, you’re right,” Buffy agreed.
The liar lashed out at her. Buffy blocked with her left arm and slashed the tip of the stake across the vampire’s face. The spilling of his own blood seemed to madden the creature, and he thundered toward her. The liar was too large, too powerful, for her to escape his grasp. He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed the breath out of her. Buffy knew her ribs were on the endangered list. She still had the stake, but couldn’t get at his heart from the front and couldn’t reach it from the back. A stab at the head or shoulder might distract him. . . .
She slammed the stake into the back of the vampire’s neck. He howled in pain and dropped her. Buffy scrambled back, picking up the fallen stake, and rose to her feet just as the furious vampire came after her again. There was no reason in its eyes now, only bloodlust and rage. It came after her.
Buffy ran.
But she didn’t run far. Four long strides took her to the basement wall. The liar was breathing clammy air at her back, reaching for her. She didn’t even slow as she leaped up, planted her feet on the wall, and did a backflip over him. The liar slammed into the wall, hard. She heard things cracking inside him.
When he turned to pursue her, Buffy staked him right through the heart.
On her way out of the basement, she picked up the cross and returned it to her bag along with the stake. The five victims in the corner were still alive, still breathing. She had checked to see that none of them had lost too much blood. Soon, they’d wake up in an extremely bad temper, probably assuming somebody had added a nasty something to their drinks.
At the top of the stairs, Buffy glanced over her shoulder into the darkness. Her heart had already slowed, but she felt wound up, energized.
“Beats spinning by a mile,” she muttered to herself.
Then she rejoined the party.
Giles stared out one of the library windows at the neighborhood that surrounded Sunnydale High School. He’d been working all afternoon and into the evening and still hadn’t come up with anything to substantiate his anxiety. Ever since Willow and Xander had told Buffy of the local legend concerning scarecrows and Halloween rain, he had been bothered by a feeling that he had read something similar somewhere. Some connection between Samhain, the spirit of Halloween, and scarecrows.
Every half hour or so, he would get up from his musty books and wander to the window. It had rained all day and through the early evening. Finally, the rain had begun to taper off. It was almost stopped now, but the hour had grown too late for children whose parents had kept them home due to the weather to set off on their Halloween candy-scavenging jour
ney.
Still, there had been quite a number of children whose parents had not kept them home. Giles had seen them moving along out on the street and the side roads, in soaked costumes or with umbrellas, and he had come to a shocking realization. The neighborhood had followed through, no matter that it was unintentional, on the observance of Samhuinn, honoring the creatures of darkness. The rituals may have changed, but the offerings, the respect for supernatural power and the land of the dead, those had remained.
Samhain still had power.
Which bothered Giles quite a bit. There had been very little slaying for Buffy to do the past few weeks. He prayed she would not let her guard down because of this false sense of safety. It might prove a fatal error.
Now he walked back across the library. He imagined that he was probably the only person who would dare spend time in the place alone. It had been dark enough before he had begun to bring in his private collection. But with the evil bound within the volumes on the school library’s shelves, the books themselves seemed to absorb any additional light that was brought into the room.
Giles sat down in a hard wooden chair and closed the book he’d been glancing through before taking a break. He scanned the table, noting which volumes he’d looked through already. At the far edge of the study table, a stack of thin volumes caught his eye: They were Watchers’ journals. He kept his own Watcher’s journal, a record of Buffy’s exploits. But these were the chronicles of past Slayers.
“Hmm,” he muttered to himself. “Perhaps.”
Giles slid the tower of journals toward him, lifted the first from the stack, and began to read.
“Well, that was refreshing,” Buffy said as she joined Willow and Xander in loitering orbit around the coffee bar. “I don’t even need a caffeine fix.”
“Buffy. Caffeine. Putting the fire out with gasoline,” Xander mused. “Certain things are just so not a good idea.”
“I assume that means we don’t have any more sharp-toothed trouble to look forward to?” Willow asked.