“I feel it,” Buffy whispered.
She pointed through the windshield.
Giles stopped the car. Behind the gates, framed by thick privet hedges, rose a monstrous and yet somehow beautiful piece of architecture unlike anything Giles had ever seen. A row of windows across the top floor of the house looked like nothing so much as eyes, staring madly down at them.
Everything inside Giles begged him to turn the car around and get Buffy out of there. There was evil here, massive, unbridled evil. Whatever was inside that house was unlike anything the Slayer had been called on to face in the past.
There was death inside.
“I’ll go open the gates.” Buffy unbuckled her seat belt.
Giles pushed up his glasses. “No! That is, they might be locked.”
“And that’s going to stop Supergirl,” Xander said.
“I’ll sound the horn,” Giles said.
“I can take care of it,” Buffy insisted, clearly amused. She gave Giles a lazy half smile and opened her car door.
That was when they heard the screams. Inhuman shrieks came from beyond that black gate, and after a moment, Giles felt almost certain that, somehow, the agonized wailing was coming from the house itself.
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For Lisa and Liz.
Thy will be done.
—C.G.
—N.H.
Acknowledgments
Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder would like to thank: our agents, Lori Perkins and Howard Morhaim, and Howard’s assistant, Lindsay Sagnette; and our editor, Lisa Clancy and her assistant, Elizabeth Shiflett. Our sincere gratitude to Caroline Kallas, Joss Whedon, and the entire cast and crew of Buffy. Thanks to our patient and supportive spouses, Connie and Wayne, for putting up with both of us.
Christopher would also like to thank Lucy Russo, and Nancy would like to thank the Babysitter Battalion: Rebekah and Julie Simpson, Ida Khabazian, and April Koljonen.
Prologue
ALL THE FREAKS THAT LURKED in the shadows of the Hellmouth were out in force that night, and all gathered in a single room for a horrifying ritual.
It was called Amateur Night at the Bronze.
Buffy Summers, the Chosen One, peered into the darkness, made somehow more dreary by the spotlights illuminating one band after another, each more hopeful and hopeless than the last. She had never seen the Bronze more packed. Each band had its own following, some well deserved and some merely fanatical. All of them crowded into the relatively small club.
The place was rocking. Buffy and her friends were fortunate to have found a table at all. The music wasn’t all that bad, she was forced to admit. The sights were fascinating, to say the least, and the company was, as always, the best anyone could hope for.
It should have been a perfect evening. From the looks on her friends’ faces, it was exactly that. For them. Oz, decked out in one of his nostalgic bowling shirts, held tightly to Willow’s hand and babbled on earnestly about the fretless Rickenbacker the current band’s bassist was playing.
Willow nodded brightly in response. They were still at that stage where everything they told each other was engaging. Buffy remembered that stage. Missed it. And wondered, briefly, if she would ever be in a relationship that lasted long enough to get past it. Perverse as it seemed to her, she liked the idea of being in love with a guy so long that she could start taking him for granted.
She missed it all, though. Missed getting dressed up for someone besides herself, and living in that delicious limbo of anticipation that having a real boyfriend was all about, not knowing what might happen next, and thrilled by the uncertainty of it all.
To the rear of the table, Cordelia and Xander sat close to each other—closer than Cordy would usually allow in public—and sipped their coffees. They just listened, sometimes to Oz and sometimes to the band on stage. Relaxed. Enjoying being together. Cordelia’s cell phone was on the table, and every few minutes she glanced down at it. Finally she turned to Xander and said something, then flicked it shut and put it in her shoulder bag.
All four of them, the two couples, glanced around the club from time to time. Rumor had it that there was a major label A and R rep present for the monthly event, and they were all trying to figure out who it might be. Oz, after all, had his band to think of. The rest of these guys were competition for Dingoes Ate My Baby. No much, but competition nevertheless.
They were having a great time. They were seniors, after all. For the moment, the world belonged to them. Why shouldn’t they enjoy it?
Perhaps, Buffy thought as she watched her friends, it really was a perfect evening. It was possible, however painful, that she simply didn’t know how to enjoy just . . . being, anymore. Despite the fact that she’d been to the Bronze more often than math class, she felt oddly out of place, almost as if it were her first day in town all over again. It made her a little dizzy and more than a bit confused.
They’re all so innocent, she thought. They’re all so young.
Then she smiled grimly at herself. Maybe she’d passed innocent on the road of life a long time ago, but young she could still lay claim to. Sometimes it just didn’t feel that way. Life was just starting for the rest of them. Who knew what fate had in store for them?
Buffy, on the other hand? Her fate was sealed.
Xander looked up at Buffy, saw her watching them, and smiled even as he knitted his eyebrows in concern.
“Okay, Miss Summers,” Xander said, “penny.” His hair was long again, more the way he’d worn it when she’d first met him almost three years ago. Still, his face was older. He’d lost his baby fat, that was for sure. If not his floppy sleeves and baggy pants. Cordelia, for all her sleek fashion sense—tonight it was a black Chinese dress embroidered with dark purple butterflies, sticks in her hair—had not yet been able to redeem him.
Buffy shrugged. “Put away your hard-earned cash, Xand. These aren’t thoughts anyone should pay for.”
He gave her a look. Slowly nodded. “Yeah,” he drawled, “the band is bringing me down, too. Their only redeeming social value is that they’re all girls.” He snapped his head toward Cordelia. “And there’ll be no physical violence from you. I saw you drooling at that drummer with the red hair two bands ago.”
Cordelia rolled her eyes. “Oh, please.”
“Was she not?” Xander flung at Willow, who glanced toward him and lifted her brows. Obviously, she had not been listening. It was a fairly common occurrence these days. One he was dealing with fairly well—accent on fairly.
Huffing, he squinted his eyes at Buffy. “Drooling, right?”
Buffy shrugged.
“Women.” He sighed. “You stick together like peanut butter and fluff.” Xander’s eyes flashed with mischief. “Which, come to think of it, makes a sandwich.”
“That’s sick,” Cordelia said. “You are disgusting.”
“In your eyes, not necessarily a bad thing.” He gave her a wink.
Cordelia looked up toward the ceiling as if her patience had flown toward the light fixtures like a moth. “Ooh.”
Buffy smiled weakly, feeling sad and frumpy in jeans and a black spaghetti-strap top.
And the band played on.
Fly away, let’s run away
> Let’s start all over.
Let’s kill time.
Let’s unwind the threads of destiny . . .
Oz shrugged and said, “They’re not so bad.”
“Yeah, for a band that sucks,” Cordelia said. “And where did they get those clothes? That whole retro seventies thing is so over.” She glanced at Buffy. “No offense.”
Buffy tilted her head. She wanted to take offense. She wanted to rise to the challenge and lob something back at Cordy. But she couldn’t seem to muster up the energy. She half smiled and took a sip from her iced latte. Where it had sat, there was a light condensation ring on the table. Iced latte. Nonfat milk. Her mother said she was getting awfully thin.
“Whoa.” Cordelia frowned. “Are you sick or something?”
Buffy looked at her questioningly.
“Well, I didn’t mean that as an insult, but you’re usually so . . . defensive, y’know?”
Let’s kill time.
“Heard from Giles?” Willow asked Buffy.
Buffy shook her head. “I told him to call only if there’s an emergency.” Finally she smiled. “You know, like if someone tries to spike the punch with extra ginger ale.”
They all chuckled. Giles was at the annual meeting of the American Library Association, sure to be a wild rave loaded with massive potential for Buffy’s Watcher to get all crazy.
“I miss him,” Willow said simply. “I was thinking this morning about graduation and . . . y’know, after. It’ll be weird not to walk into the library every morning to find out what the monsters are up to.”
“We’ll still hang with the G-man,” Xander said quickly. Too quickly. Buffy watched Xander’s face as he followed that thought through to its natural conclusion. After graduation, it seemed likely they would all go their own ways. Friendship or no, they had lives to lead. It would be hard to reconnoiter once they scattered to the four winds.
“I’ll still see him,” Buffy said quietly. “Every morning.”
“No, because, you’ll be . . . oh,” Willow said. She looked pityingly at Buffy. “I guess you will.”
“So, it’s not like you graduate and get your Slayer’s diploma?” Oz asked Buffy. “You just keep doing it?”
“You just keep doing it.” Buffy made another ring on the varnished wood. “The Energizer Buffy, that’s me.”
“Drag.” Oz nodded. “Sometimes Dingoes get tired of playing the same old songs.”
“Name that tune,” Buffy said. “ ‘In every generation, there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.’ ”
“And speaking of demons,” Xander drawled, “hiya, soul man.”
Buffy looked over her shoulder. Despite her mood—and her life—her heart skipped a beat. Angel stood behind her, dressed in his signature black jeans, dark silk shirt, and duster. The dim lights in the Bronze underscored the paleness of his skin, which served to accentuate his dark eyes and high cheekbones. So handsome. Distant, now, where once upon a time he would have put his hands on Buffy’s shoulders, leaned down to kiss the top of her head, perhaps her cheek, even her lips, in greeting.
Distant now. Careful. And unsure of his place among them.
Tonight, Buffy thought she knew that feeling quite well indeed.
“Angel,” she breathed. “What’s up? Is something bad about to happen?”
“Only if that band gives an encore,” he said dryly, straight-faced, and nodded toward the stage.
Buffy brightened a little. Her life was strange, and filled with danger, but it had its compensations. She would rather have Angel in her life in some way, any way, than to lose him to darkness again. In a few months, her friends might very well leave Sunnydale—leave her. Why would anyone want to stay? Someday, even Angel might leave. But for now, they were all here, together.
“Dance with me?” she asked Angel, sliding off her stool in anticipation.
She went to him and held out her hand. He took it, his fingers cold, and she led him to the dance floor. He gathered her in his arms; she lay her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.
* * *
“Poor Buffy,” Willow murmured.
The others acknowledged her sentiment with their silence. They all understood how difficult it was for her. Everybody applying for colleges, talking about their plans. Moving on. Growing up. What did she have to look forward to?
In some of the research she had done for Giles, Willow had found an entry in an early-twentieth-century Watcher’s journal about the average life span of a Slayer. She had not shared the information with Buffy. In fact, she herself had tried to forget it.
It was, truly, the only piece of information she could honestly say that she wished she had never learned.
Xander leaned forward as if sharing a secret, and though he spoke out loud, the deafening thrash roaring from the Carvin amps on stage was enough to keep whatever he might say secret. Willow could barely hear him, and she was only a few feet away.
“You said you were thinking about graduation,” Xander said, his eyes indicating Willow. “It’s been on my mind, too.”
“On all our minds, doofus,” Cordelia sneered, her lip curling in disdain. “It’s only the single most important day of our lives. So far.”
Xander looked at her, his face grave. Willow knew that look. It said, Not now, Cordy. Amazingly enough, Cordelia had apparently learned the meaning of that expression as well. She didn’t interrupt again.
“It’s not the most important day in Buffy’s life,” Xander explained. “To her, it’s really just another day. Sometimes I wonder if she’d even have stayed in school if it weren’t for pressure from her mom, and the convenience of Giles being right there.”
“And us,” Willow added.
“And us,” Xander conceded. “Don’t get me wrong, I feel horrible that she’s so . . . trapped by the whole Slayer gig. But what she’s doing, being the Chosen One, is so important to the world, that sometimes I wonder. I mean, if this is it, if we graduate and just, poof, there go the Slayerettes, will Buffy be the only one of us who continues to make a difference with her life?”
They looked at him oddly for a moment. There was a time when even the hint of philosophy or contemplation from Xander might have invited ridicule. Sometimes it still did. But not tonight.
Willow shrugged. “Have we ever made a difference?” she asked. “I mean us, really?” She looked at Oz. “You’re new with this. What do you think?”
Oz raised his eyebrows. “I’m not sure there’s one right answer to this question,” he said sincerely.
“I’m not sure I want to know, anyway,” Cordelia cut in. “I used to pray I would like, you know, get away from all of you and all the weirdness. Like I would drop you—”
“Or outrun us,” Xander muttered.
She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, it hasn’t happened. And now I’m all caught up in it just like you guys. So what do we do? List the Slayerettes Club or Scooby Gang or whatever under our activities in the yearbook and go back to the real world?”
“This being, of course, the unreal world,” Xander said.
Cordelia gave her hair a toss, and regarded him intently. “Well,” she said slowly, “it is.”
Xander pinched her arm. “Ouch!”
“Don’t be a baby, I barely touched you,” he said. “But come on, Cor, are you saying none of this is important?”
“No.” She shrugged. “It’s just that it’s not going to last.” She looked around the table. “I mean, for us. We have lives.”
Across the room, Buffy danced with Angel.
“Poor Buffy,” Willow whispered, so quietly she could barely hear herself. Apparently, though, Oz heard her, and put his arm around her.
“We’re here, for now,” he said. “Let’s dance.”
* * *
Angel lifted Buffy’s chin and gazed into her eyes with tender concern. “What’s wrong, Buffy?” he asked.
She lay her he
ad back on his shoulder, not daring to stare too long into his eyes. And it felt so good to have a shoulder to lean on, even if it was for just a moment; even if leaning on him was an illusion.
“Buffy?” he prodded gently.
She lifted her head, managed a smile, but she must have betrayed herself, for he didn’t smile back.
“They’re going to leave me,” she said in a rush, biting back a choke of emotion.
He nodded. “But maybe not right away. Maybe not even soon.”
She shrugged. “But eventually. And I don’t blame them. They have to . . . to move on.”
They danced for a few bars before he said, “I know it hurts. Believe me.”
She flared, just a little, mostly because she was afraid she might cry. She said, “How would you know, Angel? You outlive everybody. You’re always the one who does the moving on.”
He shook his head. “It feels the same as being left behind. It hurts as much. It hurts more, Buffy. You haven’t even been here three years. Spend sixty or seventy years watching someone you care for grow old and die, and then we’ll talk.”
“Oh.” Her voice was small.
When the song ended, they went back to the table. Buffy saw the long faces of her friends and said, “Yikes. Where are all the shiny, happy people? Looks like this is my cue to take my depressing self home.”
“No, Buffy, don’t go,” Willow said, brightening a little too easily. “We want to hang.”
“Yeah, till we strangle,” Xander added, patting her chair. “Pull one up, Angel. Grab a pint of O positive. Tell us vampire jokes. A bloodsucker walks into a bar with a parrot on his head . . . and?”
“Xander,” Buffy chided. She picked up her crocheted bag and automatically checked inside for her weapon of choice: a very sharp stake. “G’night, boys and girls.”
Willow stood. “Let’s go, too, Oz. My parents are still after me about going out on school nights.”
Oz nodded. “Buffy, lift?”
She looked at Angel, who said, “I’ll walk you home.”
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