Buffy the Vampire Slayer 2

by Nancy Holder

  The door slammed shut behind him, muffling his dad’s angry tirade but not blocking it out completely. Even worse, his mother joined in, and the two adults’ voices rose in angry confrontation. Once outside, the specific words were hard to pick out, but words really didn’t matter. The overall tone was plain: The Battling Harrises were at it again. Embarrassed and ashamed, Xander quickly made his way to the family car, hoping desperately that no one in the neighborhood would pick that minute to look outside and see him.

  If he could still hear the rising argument, so could the neighbors. Xander wasn’t in the mood for sympathetic glances.

  The car started easily enough. Xander turned on the radio as he drove into the gathering dusk. He had plenty of time.

  The drive-in’s management had billed tonight’s grand opening as a special sunset to sunrise show, but working on-site had taught him the truth behind the advertising lie. Sure, the projectors would come to life as soon as the sky got dark enough to serve as an outdoor theater, but the big screen would present nothing for an hour or so.

  Xander stole a look in the rearview mirror. Already his family home had disappeared in the distance. If only all his troubles could be left behind so easily.

  The Levensons lived fairly close, and he found their home without incident. Jonathan was already waiting for him at the curb. Xander pulled over and gestured for his classmate to get in.

  “Hey,” Jonathan said. He looked some fractional degree more at ease than Xander had ever seen him before. He was dressed more casually, too, in jeans and a jersey, with a light Windbreaker in case the night got cool. He carried a mediumsize paper bag, spotted with oil, which he set between them as he buckled up.

  “Sack?” Xander asked.

  “Popcorn,” Jonathan said.

  “Sweet!” Xander said, surprised by the considerate gesture. He kept one hand on the wheel but used the other to scoop unearthed fluffy white kernels into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed, then continued. “Salty, I mean.”

  “Maybe we should stop somewhere and get sodas,” Jonathan said.

  “Nah, drinks are on the house,” Xander said. He reached into the backseat and hoisted a small cooler, then set it down again. “Just like admission.”

  Some minutes and miles passed as they drove to the theater before Jonathan broke the silence.

  “Y’know,” he said, “at first I was surprised when you invited me to this.”

  “Mmmm?” Xander said. His mouth was full again.

  “Uh-huh,” Jonathan replied. He hadn’t taken any of the popcorn but was staring raptly out the window. It was as if he thought the world’s secret lay somewhere in the night beyond. “No one invites me anywhere, Xander. I figured the girls all turned you down.”

  “That’s not true,” Xander said, but he felt a pang of something like guilt nonetheless.

  “S’okay,” the shorter boy said. “And, the way I see it, there’s one good thing about going to the movies with another guy.”

  “Oh?” Xander asked, suddenly vaguely nervous.

  “Uh-huh. It’s better than going by yourself.”

  A dozen thoughts flitted through Xander’s mind, images and sound bites summoned up from the depths of his memory. He thought of Cordelia’s admonition against taking another girl to the movies, and he thought of how breezily Buffy had declined his overtures so many times during the preceding months. He remembered the smirk of dismissal he’d gotten from the Goth girl with the pretty eyes, and how readily he’d accepted it. For some reason he even recalled the plaintive way that Willow looked at him sometimes when she thought he couldn’t see her.

  “It’s a melancholy truth you speak, my friend,” he finally said. The words made him feel worldly-wise. “A melancholy truth, indeed.”

  TDQYDJP’s gig was only through Thursday. Taking the stage tonight was another band, much worse and much louder. Their music sounded very much like the wailing of damned souls, and Cordelia could only understand every third word.

  “What the frick is ‘German Dungeon Rock’?” Harmony asked. Her barbed words cut through the fog of background noise that filled the Bronze between sets.

  She wasn’t looking for any real answer to her question, Cordelia knew. Queries like that were one of the many ways Harmony had of complaining.

  “I don’t know,” Cordelia told her for what felt like the hundredth time. She wasn’t enjoying herself. Harmony was well into petulant mode, and that was never fun. Most nights the other girl made an appropriately supportive audience, but not tonight. Part of the problem was that Aura hadn’t shown, and Harmony was usually at her best in a group setting. Experienced one on one, as a central attraction rather than as part of an ensemble, she grated.

  “I mean, it doesn’t have a good beat,” the blonde continued, as if she hadn’t heard Cordelia. Maybe she hadn’t; the background chatter was pretty loud, and the Bronze’s DJ had picked some particularly obnoxious tunes for between-sets play.

  No plain vanilla rock tonight, Cordelia realized as sounds like a cat being killed blared from the sound system.

  Harmony was on a roll. “I mean, I don’t think you can dance to this stuff,” she said. She leaned forward and sipped from her glass’s bent straw, then scowled. “Empty,” she said, sounding like a very little girl having a very bad day. “This whole evening is a bust.”

  Cordelia continued to pay her as little attention as possible. Instead, trying not to be too obvious about it, she alternated between scoping out tonight’s crowd and sneaking peeks at the Bronze’s entrance. Tonight’s crop of club-goers was sparse; worse, most either repelled or bored her. Too many were known quantities, fixtures on the Sunnydale social scene, and the rest were unsavory types drawn by the evening’s attraction.

  That could change, though. Cordelia hoped it would. There was always a chance that someone new and interesting would arrive. She’d even be happy to see Buffy and the gang, provided that Xander played things cool. That wasn’t going to happen, though, since Buffy was likely on patrol and Xander was sure to be at his stupid drive-in.

  She wondered if he was having fun. She hoped so, as long as it wasn’t too much fun.

  “I just wish Aura would show,” Harmony prattled on. “She hasn’t been in school for two days now.” Her eyes brightened. “Hey,” she asked eagerly, “d’you think she, you know, ran off with that wild one from the other night?”

  “Without telling us about it?” Cordelia asked tartly. “Don’t be silly. Maybe she’s sick.”

  There was a line at the ticket booth. Xander craned his head and tried to count the number of cars and trucks between the Harrismobile and the theater entrance. He gave up at twenty, partly because his neck got tired and partly because the line was moving with relative speed.

  “You need money?” Jonathan asked.

  He hadn’t spoken much since being picked up, and Xander knew why. They really didn’t have a whole lot to talk about. The realization was a humbling one, but nothing new.

  “Nope, I told you,” Xander said. “We’re guests. The boss-man insisted.”

  The car moved forward in fits and starts as the patrons ahead of them paused to pay. That changed when they finally reached the box office and the ticket seller waved them through with a nod of recognition. Xander snuck a side glance to see if Jonathan was appropriately impressed, then guided the Harrismobile forward, negotiating the gravel bed of the parking lot easily. He was on familiar territory now.

  The drive-in’s basic shape was a bowl—a shallow one, lopsided and irregular. At the time of its birth, more than fifty years before, construction crews took advantage of a natural depression in the hills surrounding Sunnydale. With bulldozers and steam shovels they had deepened and customized it, terracing some two thirds of its curve to provide raked parking. Dead center in the remaining curve was the brick and steel-girder shell of the great screen, support for the lightweight, reflective curtain. Those two steps had constituted the major portion of the effort; the concession sta
nd, projection shack, and other appurtenances had been minor in comparison. Everything that original crew had done, they’d done well.

  Xander told Jonathan the story as he guided the car toward the reserved parking for staff and guests. “They built to last in those days,” he said. Hanging around on the construction site earlier in the week had given him new appreciation for construction work and the men who did it. “The place closed down in the 1980s, but it has held together since then.”

  “Why’d it close?” Jonathan asked as they passed another rank of parked cars. Dusk was giving way to night, and it was hard to see into the other vehicles, but he seemed determined to give it a try.

  “Don’t know for sure,” Xander said. Just in time he saw an opening in the line of cars and took advantage. Someone, somewhere, tooted a horn in greeting as he did. He chose to believe that the greeting was for him and made a vague wave in return. “Home video and rising gas prices conspired to—”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Jonathan said, interrupting. That wasn’t something he did very often. “I looked it up online. You know what state still has the most drive-ins in operation?” he asked.

  “Um,” Xander said, “I’d hazard a guess, but I think you’re about to tell me.”

  “California,” Jonathan said with a nod.

  Xander nodded. That made sense. California still had a fair amount of relatively open countryside, and Californians were remarkably tenacious in their love of driving.

  “So why not here?” Jonathan asked, pressing the issue.

  “Don’t know,” Xander said again.

  He pulled the family car into an available slot, set the brake, and killed the engine. Before them stood the great curved screen that he’d watched a team of contractors reinforce and resurface. Just now its gleaming white exterior presented the image of a local car dealership.

  “Sound?” Jonathan asked.

  “Oh, right,” Xander said. He turned the dashboard radio on and set it to the appropriate frequency. The car’s interior filled with the voice of his favorite local DJ, extolling the virtues of a particular make of auto.

  He grinned. The show was about to begin. This was going to be good.

  • • •

  The kettle whistled and Giles extinguished the stove burner, making the merry sound fade. He poured healthy measures of the boiling water into his teapot and teacup and returned the kettle to the stove top. Silently he counted to ten. Satisfied that the pot had warmed properly, he drained it, then put the loaded filter basket in place. He poured water again, through the tea leaves, and smiled as steam scented the small, tidy kitchen of his home with the rich, almost medicinal aroma of his preferred blend. Almost as an afterthought he emptied the china cup, also properly warmed now, and placed it on the service tray beside the pot. The entire ritual was oddly comforting, a reminder of his home, so far away.

  He took the tray to his desk. As the tea continued to steep, he made a quick check of the effort’s current status.

  He’d only just begun, really. Three books lay open on the desktop with specific passages indicated by careful application of those insipid little yellow slips that the Americans had come up with. The books were secondary works, rare and desirable by some criteria but pedestrian by Watcher standards. The books’ authors were not true adepts but disciples, dilettantes, and dabblers, with the good fortune to study more elevated tomes, if not to own them. They’d studied such works as the Crimson Chronicles and the Pnakotic Manuscripts, and then attempted to record the knowledge and processes in words of their own. A surprisingly high percentage had perished horribly under suspicious circumstances, but their derivative books had uses. They weren’t essential to the work Giles did, but sometimes they served as what Willow might have termed “backups.”

  The excursuses were a different kettle of fish entirely. They were derivative too but were the products of superior minds, specialists in specific aspects of the occult. The four excursuses stacked at his left elbow were fragile and rare, so Giles stored them in Mylar sleeves that Xander had obtained for him at a local comic book shop.

  Giles slid the first from its transparent envelope. Hand calligraphy, the letters and words elaborately intertwined, nearly filled every page. The document was made of some kind of thin leathery substance, and Giles knew from personal experience that it could not be photocopied. Any attempt to do so, with any machine, merely resulted in blank, wasted paper.

  His tea was ready. Giles poured a cup, added a bit of sugar, and sipped. Perfect. He would have preferred a bit of brandy, but the night’s work demanded his full attention and a clear mind.

  Two of the excursuses were specific to the missing books. One was a treatise on ectoplasm; the other, a discussion of transmigration, the transfer of living souls between vessels. The Book of Dorahm-Gorath addressed many more topics, of course, but he had to work with what he had on hand. The idea was to cross-reference the excursuses with the secondary works and arrive at an approximation of the source document. He’d not be able to reconstruct all of the contents, but he had to start somewhere. It was a process akin to triangulation.

  Giles read and made precise notes on the sheets of a yellow legal pad. He sipped his tea as he worked. The clock ticked as the hours slid by and the remaining tea turned cold.

  He had just correlated an excursus reference with a passage in his well-worn copy of Secrets of Alchemie and How to Profit Thereby when someone knocked on his door.

  “Odd,” he said softly, after a glance at the clock. The hour was late and he hadn’t been anticipating company. Perhaps it was Buffy dropping by while out on patrol?

  Distracted, he started to gather books and work sheets into an orderly stack. Giles trusted himself to sip tea in an orderly manner, but he remembered all too well how casual the Slayer had been with her lunch shake.

  Knuckles rapped on the door again.

  “A moment, just a moment!” Giles called. Slightly irritated, he opened the door. “I do hope you realize the hour. It . . .”

  His words trailed off as he saw his visitor. He blinked and laughed, a chuckle that sounded nervous even in his own ears. “Oh, my word. It can’t possibly be Halloween yet,” he said.

  And then he said nothing else at all.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Sunnydale’s warehouse district was quiet after sunset. Streetlights were few and far between, and the worn, weathered buildings loomed darkly against the night sky. Even the pale glow of the moon served only to accentuate the shadows.

  Buffy liked to come here at least once a week, to look for signs of trouble or habitation. The nooks and crannies of the big old commercial buildings made good hiding places for vampire nests. Other times they served as way stations for the various occult artifacts that kept making their way into the city, and way stations for the people who traded in those artifacts.

  She moved with easy grace though the night, not calling attention to herself but not trying to hide, either. Her feet gritted audibly on the cracked and dirty pavement, and she didn’t shirk the yellowish radiance of the one-per-block streetlights. One of many reasons that she’d made such a success of herself as the Slayer was that she looked like a victim: young and slight, with girlish features and bouncing blond hair. In an imagined vampire restaurant, “Today’s Special” would have looked very much like her. Buffy’s only real concession to the night’s work was her weapons cache, hanging by cross-strap from one shoulder, like a paperboy’s bag.

  After the incident with the wolf-man, she wanted to keep her hands free.

  Without trying to be too obvious about it, she eyed the surrounding darkness. Darkened doorways and darker alleys made good hunting stations for vampires, and right now, a plain ol’ garden variety vamp would have been a relief. Though she’d never admit it, the past two nights had unnerved her, just a teensy-tiny bit. First there was the ambush by the surreal wolf-man, who fell so far outside of even Giles’s knowledge and expertise. Then there was the persistent electric t
ension, the never-relieved sense that something terrible was going to happen. After two restless nights the easily recognized menace of fangs and bloodlust would be almost welcome. Sometimes familiar was good.

  She managed a smile at the thought. Who would have believed that something like killing vampires could ever become routine? But that was precisely what had happened over the course of long months since she’d accepted, however reluctantly, the life of the Slayer.

  For now, nothing seemed amiss. No vampires, no wolf-men, no demons—no nothing, really, except for the electric buzz of aging streetlights and that odd burnt smell that old buildings get. Even the sense of lurking menace that had gnawed at her for two nights now abated slightly.

  Either that or she’d gotten used to it. Sooner or later, anything that persisted long enough became routine. Her own life had taught her that.

  She paused for a moment, bathed in a streetlight’s pale glow, and mulled over the possibility. It seemed unlikely, but still . . .

  That was when she heard the roar of engines approaching.

  On the huge screen’s curved expanse was the gigantic image of a half-dozen men on chromed motorcycles, huge against a field of black asphalt and blue sky. They were big men, burly and strong, clad in ripped blue jeans and leather jackets or vests. Most let their hair and beards fly wildly in the wind, and only a few wore any kind of headgear at all. Those few looked very wrong: Rather than safety equipment with tinted visors, they wore German-style army helmets with broad, low rims. One had a spike on top. Guitar music blared, strident and emphatic.

  “I thought the cheerleader thing came first,” Jonathan said, but he didn’t take his eyes from the screen. The image was bright enough that hints of color flickered across his face.

  “Cheerleader last,” Xander said. He spoke as if explaining the natural order of the universe to a novice. “Kung fu first.”