Aldo started to sob.
“That we still do not have the heir.”
He nodded slightly, bit his lip.
“That the Hellmouth has been put . . . in order.”
With a whimper, the young magician turned to run, screaming, through the remains of the vineyard.
Il Maestro snickered. He didn’t bother to expend the energy it would take to raise his hand. He’d never been melodramatic. Black lightning coursed from his body, crackling as it reached shadow tendrils across the dead vineyard and lightly caressed Brother Aldo’s body. He froze in place and began to shudder. Black tendrils danced across his skin and his clothes.
Aldo erupted in an explosion of charred flesh and bloody cinders.
Il Maestro shook his head. “What a waste,” he whispered to himself.
He never expected to hear the voice that was now raised behind him.
“My sentiments exactly,” said the voice.
Perturbed, Il Maestro turned and peered through the night and the dead vineyard at the figure who even now stepped closer. The hair was as white as white could be. Though slender of frame, he held himself with a power and arrogance that was slightly off-putting, even for one so powerful as the master of the Sons of Entropy.
“You haven’t come through with your part of the bargain,” the visitor said dangerously.
“I want the boy,” Il Maestro replied, his tone meant to brook no argument.
The other, the visitor, only smiled. Showing fangs.
“You promised us the Spear of Longinus,” he said. “A trinket, you said. A toy, in the grand scheme of things. My baby doesn’t like to be disappointed. Her man promises her something, he delivers.”
As the wind he moved, and stood beside Il Maestro, ignoring the black fire that surrounded the master sorcerer.
“That’d be me, by the way,” he whispered.
Then he backed off, with a grin and a laugh. “I don’t much care for babysitting. We’re gonna have stew à la Gatekeeper Junior before long. You get us the Spear of Longinus, we’ll give you the boy.”
Il Maestro was enraged, but logic dictated he must remain silent. He wanted that boy. The heir of the House of Regnier was hidden from his magickal senses by virtue of his heritage. Thus had the vampires been able to hide the boy from him. As he had done quite often in the past, he had used them as his tools to abduct the boy, in exchange for that little trinket. It had been an agreeable bargain at first. But then, he had thought he would have the spear in hand by now.
“How long do we have?” Il Maestro asked.
The white-haired vampire shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. He took out a cigarette and a metal lighter, flipped it open, and lit up. There was a long pause as he sucked smoke into dead lungs.
“Way I figure it, you’ve got until I get bored, or Drusilla gets hungry,” he said casually.
A moment later, Spike was gone.
About the Authors
Christopher Golden is the best-selling author of the epic dark fantasy series The Shadow Saga, as well as the X-Men trilogy Mutant Empire and the current hardcover Codename Wolverine. With Nancy Holder, he has written several other Buffy projects, including the Gatekeeper Trilogy and The Watcher’s Guide. He is currently at work on a series of YA mystery novels for Pocket Books. Please visit him at www.christophergolden.com.
Four-time Bram Stoker Award-winner Nancy Holder has sold thirty-six novels and over two hundred short stories, articles, and essays. She has also sold game-related fiction, and comic books and TV commercials in Japan. Her work has been translated into over two dozen languages. She and Christopher Golden have written four Buffy-related books together, the most recent of which was Blooded. She is the author of Gambler’s Star: The Six Families, book one of a science-fiction trilogy for Avon Books, due out in October 1998. She lives in San Diego with her husband, Wayne, and their daughter, Belle.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Out of the Madhouse Page 30