RETURN to CHAOS

by CRAIG SHAW GARDNER

  How much came from inside herself?

  She blinked and looked around the room. It was early morning, maybe half an hour before her mother normally got her up for school. Sunlight was already streaming through the blinds of her window.

  But what about the dream?

  The dream told her the end of this business with the Druids was very near. Maybe Willow was in danger.

  She’d have to get up and find the others. Maybe Giles could figure out what the dream meant, if she could figure out any way to explain it.

  Buffy sighed. Her lips still wished she had slept for a few seconds more, at least until after the kiss.

  Chapter 21

  SHE WAS SAFE DURING THE DAY. CORDELIA HAD TO keep telling herself that fact through her morning shower, the brushing of her teeth, the one glass of orange juice—the only part of breakfast that she had wanted. She told herself again as she hurried up the walk to school. She was safe during the day.

  It was only at night that Naomi could call out to her.

  But if Naomi called her again, how could Cordelia keep from doing something terrible? Last night, Cordelia had tried to get poor Barb to go into Naomi’s clutches. No, it was worse than that; she had sent Barb to be bitten by a vampire. If Dave hadn’t been there, Barb would have been dead. Or worse. All because of Cordelia.

  And she couldn’t remember any of it.

  It was like Naomi was using Cordy’s brain without her permission. As if there was an extra somebody creeping around inside of her skull.

  Cordelia barely kept herself from shivering. Oh, she hoped Giles and Willow had turned up something last night!

  “Hi, Cordelia!”

  Cordelia almost jumped out of her skin. But it was only Amanda, waving at her from the high school steps.

  “So, tonight’s the big night!” Amanda enthused.

  “The big night?” Cordelia asked, not quite connecting. Had Amanda heard something? She pulled open the door as Amanda fell into step next to her.

  “For the Spring Formal, silly!”

  “Oh, right, the Spring Formal.” Cordelia tried to smile.

  “So did you tell Xander what kind of corsage to get? You can’t have it clashing with your dress, and these boys are so helpless when it comes to fashion Stuff.”

  Cordelia stared at Amanda. How could she have ever felt that any of this was important? Well, no, it would be important any time but now.

  Should she tell Amanda about it? Who was she kidding? Amanda? But Cordelia wanted to tell her something.

  She shook her head. “No—well, I don’t think I’m going.”

  “What? After being on the planning committee? Did you and Xander have a fight?” Amanda looked outraged. “I think you should go without him.”

  Wouldn’t you just love to see me show without a date? Cordelia thought, then sighed. “Yeah, I guess there was a fight. And Xander and I still have to work things out.”

  “You’re going to work things out rather than go to the Spring Formal?” Amanda shook her head in astonishment. “Sometimes, Cordelia, you can be so weird.”

  Amanda was right. Right now, Cordelia was weird.

  But it wasn’t her fault. She had to keep reminding herself of that, too. Naomi had done something to her, something that Cordelia was going to change.

  With Willow’s and Giles’s help, she’d take that “weird,” and stuff it right down Naomi’s throat.

  “Listen,” Amanda said abruptly, “I’ve got to stop in here for a minute.”

  Cordelia looked up. She was having trouble today paying attention to her surroundings. They were right in front of the door to the girls locker room, a couple of classrooms away from Cordelia’s locker.

  Boy, she hoped she didn’t see Naomi’s face in the mirror again.

  “Well, see you!” Amanda called.

  She opened the door to a whole bunch of screams.

  She let the door swing shut.

  “Maybe,” Amanda said, “I don’t have to go in there right now.”

  Well, that nails it, Cordelia thought. Another crisis. Should she do something?

  Two girls burst from the room, one wearing street clothes, the other rapidly buttoning a blouse over her gym shorts. From the looks on their faces, they wanted to be anywhere but in that locker room.

  “What—,” Cordelia began, but neither one of the girls stopped long enough to chat.

  What was going on now? No doubt something incredibly icky. Was Buffy in trouble? Buffy gravitated to icky. Maybe there was some way Cordelia could help. Maybe she should go get Giles. Cordelia sighed again. Why couldn’t she just go to some school where the real crisis was whether or not you went to the Spring Formal?

  “Is anybody in there?” she called.

  One more girl hurried past her, still pulling on her T-shirt as she ran out the door. “You don’t want to know what’s in there!”

  The swinging locker-room door flipped back and forth. The smell hit Cordelia first. She had smelled that odor before. It had something to do with Naomi.

  “Ewww,” Amanda complained. “Did something back up? Like the entire sewer system of Sunnydale?”

  There were noises coming out of the locker room, a banging and a scraping. “Something’s moving in there.” She heard a crash, as if a whole row of lockers had just toppled.

  Amanda laughed uneasily. “Who needs gym? Even better, maybe I’ll go to lacrosse practice wearing my Anne Klein skirt.”

  Another crash. Cordelia took a step away. Amanda took more than a few steps away. A couple other girls had shown up, too, but no one particularly wanted to be the first one to go into that locker room. Cordelia noticed that no one was particularly leaving either. It was sort of like passing an accident on the highway . . . you didn’t really want to look, but you sort of did.

  She heard a groaning noise on the other side of the door.

  “Hu—hu—hu.”

  The door swung open.

  All the girls in the hallway screamed together.

  A muck monster stood framed in the door. Most of the other girls took off. But Cordelia couldn’t. There was something . . .

  An instant later, Cordelia realized she knew this creature!

  The whole thing came flooding back. Naomi had introduced him and suggested various unspeakable things—some kind of threat against Cordelia. Most all of it seemed like a threat against Cordelia.

  Now Naomi had sent her servant!

  So Cordelia wasn’t safe during the day! But she was in school, surrounded by her fellow students. What could the forces of evil do when it was almost time for the homeroom bell?

  There had to be some way out of this.

  Cordelia waved at the monster.

  “Bryce?” She tried to smile. “I know we meant something to each other once. But—keep away. No matter what Naomi says, I just don’t think we’re compatible.”

  “Ewww!” Amanda shouted from where she had stepped a dozen feet down the hall. “You know this thing’s name?”

  “We all know this thing. He used to be called Bryce Abbot.”

  “That’s Bryce Abbot?” another of the girls asked. “Ugh. He must have stopped taking showers.”

  “I heard college can change a person,” someone agreed.

  “What does he want?” somebody else asked.

  That, Cordelia realized, is a very good question. Since he’d shown up in the locker room doorway, the thing hadn’t made a single threatening move. In fact, it hadn’t made much of any moves at all.

  “What do you want?” Cordelia asked.

  “Hu—,” he said.

  “He’s trying to speak!” Amanda called.

  “Sla—sla—,” the monster replied.

  Cordelia thought she could see Bryce’s eyes under all that matted hair. If she recalled correctly, they had been very nice eyes. He wasn’t going to attack her. If anything, he looked scared of her and all the other girls who hung back at a distance.

  There was a piece of paper in his
hand.

  She almost jumped back as he thrust it forward.

  “Sleigh!” he rumbled.

  Sleigh? Slayer? This was for Buffy? She took the crumpled piece of paper. It was a little on the slimy side, too. “Sure. I’ll make sure she gets it.”

  “You understand this thing?” Amanda demanded.

  “Slade?” asked someone else.

  “Who the heck is that?” asked a third.

  Cordelia shrugged. “Oh, it’s just the—uh—nickname of a friend of mine.” She smiled at the monster as she backed away. “Thanks, Bryce. I’ll make sure she gets it.”

  Amanda nodded in approval. “Slade. Sort of a cool name. Is she part of a motorcycle gang?” She glanced up at the locker room door, which was once again swinging to a close. The muck monster was gone. “But how did you know that was Bryce Abbot? Boy, Cordelia, are you weird!”

  Cordelia decided she had had enough of Amanda for one morning. She looked down at the crumpled paper in her hand. There were words written between the muck stains. It was a real message.

  “How did I know it was Bryce?” She glanced up at Amanda. “You never forget a boy you dated.”

  “Ewww!” all the other girls agreed.

  The voice of authority cut through their chatter.

  “All right! What’s going on here?”

  Cordelia hastily stuck the note in the front of her sweater. She knew what was coming before she even saw the principal.

  Principal Snyder was a small, nervous, balding man with a penetrating stare. The first time he looked at you, every time he looked at you, there was something in his expression that said you were guilty.

  Cordy had spent the last few months actively avoiding Snyder. She hadn’t gotten into real trouble at Sunnydale High for at least the last three principals. That was probably close to two years around here. Endless hours in the after-school detention hall? No, thank you. She had better things to do.

  “Well?” the principal’s voice cut through her thoughts. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Whatever was going on here, Principal Snyder would put an end to it. Principal Snyder could put an end to anything.

  “I was about to go into the locker room,” Amanda said, “when all of a sudden there was all this screaming.”

  Principal Snyder nodded curtly.

  Well, if this was in the hands of the school administration, Cordelia had other things to do.

  “See you later, Amanda.”

  Cordelia found herself caught in Snyder’s unforgiving gaze. “Where do you think you’re going, young lady? Cordelia Chase, isn’t it? Nobody’s going anywhere until I get to the bottom of this. Wait here until I come back.”

  Was this fair? She was the one who had calmed everybody down, including a certain football star turned muck monster. Of course, how do you explain that sort of thing, especially to a Principal Snyder?

  “But—,” Cordelia began anyway.

  The principal glared at her. One did not argue with the principal. He pushed open the locker-room door.

  Amanda pointed at Snyder. “But you’re—this is the girls—can you—”

  “I’m the principal,” Snyder snapped. “I can do anything.”

  They all gathered just outside the door. The smell was still there.

  Snyder wrinkled his nose. “Did something back up in here?”

  Nobody answered him. It was very quiet in the locker room. Cordelia realized anything could hide between the rows of lockers. Who knew what Bryce might do? He wasn’t exactly human any more. Or what if Naomi hadn’t sent Bryce—alone?

  The principal stepped inside. The door swung shut behind him.

  One did not disobey Snyder. Cordy and the remaining girls would have to wait.

  The door swung open again.

  Principal Snyder looked at Cordelia with his X-ray vision. “You’re sure there was some man in here. This isn’t some practical joke?”

  Cordelia could already see herself spending all morning in Snyder’s office. Guilty, guilty, guilty. “Don’t ask me. Ask all of the girls who ran out of there screaming!”

  Ms. Applebaum, the girls-lacrosse instructor, stood with arms folded in the next doorway down the hall, the one that led to the gym. “Nobody came out this way—well, nobody but half a dozen students. I opened the door as soon as I heard the screams.”

  “Where could he be?” Amanda wailed.

  “Well, there’s a lot of cleaning up to be done in there!” Snyder surveyed the girls before him. “I never realized young women could be so . . . untidy.”

  Amanda wouldn’t let it alone. “But what about the—thing in there?”

  “How could there have been a man in there?” Snyder snapped. “The room only has two exits, this hallway and the gym. Both were being watched. How could he have escaped? Through the toilet?”

  “Ewww!” Amanda and the rest of the girls agreed.

  Cordelia shook her head. “I don’t think we want to know.”

  Principal Snyder glared at the four girls, but there was nothing he could hold them on. He gave them all a short lecture on personal hygiene, then told them they were free to go, until next time. And he would be watching them all personally from here on in.

  Cordelia watched Snyder march back toward his office. Well, this was starting out to be a perfect day, wasn’t it? Maybe she just needed Amanda to tell her how weird she was again.

  She felt the crinkled paper inside her sweater. The note could be important. She’d better get over to the library.

  Xander walked into the library. The place was even more quiet than usual.

  “Shop!” He’d seen that in a British movie once.

  He heard a groan behind the librarian’s station. Xander hurried across the room as he saw Giles struggle to his feet.

  “Hey! G-man!” Xander called. “Are you all right?”

  Giles nodded his head. “I think so.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose. “It’s morning, is it?”

  “Maybe you should cut back on those all-nighters,” Xander suggested. The librarian did not look at all like his chipper self—well, his grumpy, sort-of-crusty chipper self. “Do you want me to get the school nurse?”

  Giles shook his head.

  “They’ve got Willow,” he said. “The elder Druid, George, came and took her away.”

  Xander couldn’t believe it. “They took Willow away? Those lousy, no-good, two-timing, back-stabbing Druids? But where?”

  Giles looked around, found a chair, and sat down. “I don’t have the faintest idea.”

  “Man, I trusted those guys!” Xander looked around the room as if some book was going to leap off the shelf and give him the answer. He had no idea what to do.

  Buffy bopped into the room. She was smiling for a change. Well, that wouldn’t last for long.

  “Hey, what’s the sitch?” she called.

  They quickly filled her in on the situation. George’s treachery, Willow’s abduction, Giles’s unwanted rest period.

  “So those guys just came here to double-cross us?” Xander asked as the explanation was winding down.

  “I don’t know,” Buffy replied. “Maybe we can still trust some of them. Ian was out looking for his uncle last night. I got the feeling when I talked to him that he felt like his uncle had gone off on some crazy mission.”

  “A crazy mission involving Willow!” Xander made a fist. The thought of something happening to Willow was getting unbearable. Even before there was a Buffy, there had been a Willow. Willow had been his best friend forever! They were so close that they could finish each other’s sentences.

  “I don’t want to alarm anyone,” Giles said from where he now rested his head in his hands, “but I think George might have wanted Willow as a sacrifice.”

  “Like a human sacrifice? Like a killing-as-a-partof-a-spell human sacrifice?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  The library door opened again before Xander could get really upset.

  Cordelia ran into the room. “Oh, Xander, am I
glad to see you. What just happened—” She stopped to look at the librarian. “Are you all right?”

  “He had a run-in with a Druid,” Xander explained.

  “But I thought the Druids were the good guys!”

  “So did we,” Buffy agreed.

  “I guess they were just hiding their black hats,” Xander offered.

  Cordelia frowned. “So, is Willow around?”

  Giles sighed. “No. I’m afraid last night Willow was abducted by one of the Druids.”

  “She’s been abducted?” Cordelia’s face fell. “That means she’ll never figure out the mastery spell. Boy, these Druids are getting worse and worse!”

  She was worrying about Willow figuring out her spell? Xander wanted to throw his hands up in the air. Obviously, she didn’t realize what was really happening.

  “Cordy! Focus here. Giles thinks Willow was abducted to be a human sacrifice!”

  “Human sacrifice? I guess that’s pretty serious, too.”

  Well, Xander recalled, Cordy is under a vampire’s spell. One had to keep things in perspective.

  Not that Xander could see any perspective at all in vampire spells and human sacrifices.

  “Only one Druid did the actual abducting,” Giles added, “the elder one, George. But he is their leader. The others may be compelled to follow his orders.”

  Xander wasn’t so sure anymore—about anything. “Has anybody seen Oz? They may have done something to him, too!”

  “I saw Oz last night, with Ian,” Buffy said. “Ian walked me home, but Oz left to go . . . find Willow.”

  No one spoke for a moment. Willow first, then Oz? Xander thought. Why?

  “We must assume the worst, musn’t we?” Giles grimaced. “And we must devise a plan.” Buffy was already roaming about the library, gathering her bag, some stakes, a crossbow. Action girl.

  “This is terrible!” Xander yelled. Maybe he was overreacting. He wanted to overreact. “Willow’s gone, with her computer skills. Oz is gone—well, with his Oz skills.” Actually, as Xander remembered, when Oz could be coaxed in front of a computer, he was no slouch, either. “Here we are in the middle of one of the great libraries of the occult, and I don’t know where to look. Sometimes I wish one of your books would just tell us what to do!”