Ghost Roads

by Christopher Golden

  Savagely he kicked the door, then grabbed his duster and headed for home.

  * * *

  “Baby, I’m home,” Spike called out, as he entered the cottage. No answer, so he went into the bedroom. What he saw there shocked him only slightly.

  Dru had gagged the boy and tied him to the bedpost. Her favorite doll, Miss Edith, sat across from him on the mattress. The dolly was blindfolded, which meant she’d been naughty. Dru sat with her mantilla all askew between the two of them, serving pretend tea from a miniature tea set Spike had stolen from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on a dare.

  “One lump or two?” she queried the boy, making stabbing motions at his eyes.

  “Now, pet, no hitting.” He joined the party, perching on the bed and curling one leg beneath himself. “I don’t think they’ve got the bloody thing,” Spike said to Dru.

  “I don’t think they’re relaying your messages to the proper authorities,” Dru retorted, as she poured him some tea in a tiny bone china cup. “Tell Miss Edith how tasty your tea is, love. She has misbehaved and will not be taking any, and she should know what she has lost.”

  “It’s shatteringly brilliant,” he said, flashing his white teeth. “The best. Numero uno.”

  “Spain,” she said sadly.

  He set down his cup. “I think you’re right. I think we’re stuck with some minor Entropy clerk who’s trying to make a name for himself in the organization. Thinks he’ll come running into the great hall one night with the boy, bow and scrape, ‘Look, King Arthur, I’ve got the Gatekeeper’s heir. Make me a knight of the bleeding round table.’ ” He raised his nose in the air and spoke like an aristocrat, which sent Dru into peals of laughter.

  He was glad. He loved to make his baby laugh.

  “What do we do if they don’t have the Spear?” she asked.

  He leaned across her tiny ocean of tea things and kissed the end of her nose. “I suppose we’ll eat him.”

  “Si, matador!” She clicked her fingers. “Si, si!”

  Chapter 10

  THE BROTHERS WERE UPSTAIRS IN their cloisters, singing their unholy chants. Their voices filtered into the darkness below, as did the screams of the sacrifice. But II Maestro barely noticed. His gaze was on the corpse of the traitor, Brother Albert, as it hung in the sulfurous, boiling air above the pentagram.

  In the shadows, his dark lord watched as II Maestro waved a hand over the dead mouth and flicked open the dead eyes with a snap of his fingers. From the mouth crawled a spider and a worm, both wilting in the heat. The eyes of the dead man were milky, but something moved beneath their filmy domes.

  Sweating and blistered, II Maestro began the questioning.

  “Wretched betrayer, before you suffer the eternal torments of hell, tell me what I wish to know.”

  “Maestro,” the dead man said, “forgive me.”

  “Forgiveness is beyond me,” II Maestro retorted. “Had you need for that, you should have looked elsewhere.”

  “Maestro, spare me.”

  II Maestro only chuckled. He pointed to the dead mouth. “You met the Slayer.”

  “I met her.”

  “You told her where I am.”

  “She did not believe me.”

  “Oh?”

  The shadows shifted. II Maestro’s dark master was listening hard.

  “She believes you are in Vienna.”

  “Why on earth would she believe that?”

  “Maestro, I burn,” said the corpse. “I am in agony.”

  “It’s only the beginning, my friend.” II Maestro smiled to himself in anticipation. “Tell me why she believes I’m in Vienna.”

  “I do not know.”

  “Liar!”

  From a table laden with instruments of torture, II Maestro picked up a whip which glowed with a purplish light. He struck the corpse across the face. The corpse writhed.

  Again, across the milky eyes, which burst. The fluid began to steam as it cascaded over the temples.

  The body gasped and said, “Maestro, I don’t know.”

  II Maestro brought the whip down again.

  The corpse groaned dully.

  He raised the whip—

  “Enough,” said the demon in the shadows. “This is accomplishing nothing.”

  II Maestro was disappointed, but obeyed. “Name your confederates,” he said, trying a new direction.

  The corpse was silent for a moment. Then it said, “None.”

  “No one?” II Maestro shook his head. “Not for one moment do I believe you.”

  The eyeless corpse said, “No one helped me.”

  “But surely, there were those who supported you. Who wished you well.”

  “Ahhh.” Brother Albert twisted in the air. “Alone.”

  The dead man burst into flame. In less than five seconds, he was nothing but a pile of cinders. II Maestro raised his brows and stared into the shadows.

  “I didn’t do that. Did you?”

  “No, you fool. He did.” The demon sounded disgusted. “And you allowed it.”

  “No, my lord,” II Maestro protested. “I didn’t—”

  “Silence! Oh, you are useless. Useless.” The shadows shifted again. The heat in the chamber rose unbearably, singeing the hair off II Maestro’s body. He was terrified that he, too, would burst into flames.

  “Please, my lord,” he said.

  “You promised me the Slayer,” the demon said. “And if she is not here by the full moon, your daughter takes her place. On the altar, and in Hell.”

  II Maestro bowed his head. But in the folds of his robe, his hands were clenched. That would never happen.

  Never.

  * * *

  Angel had just awakened. He was in a pension in a small town near Geneva, nowhere on a map. There was an 8:30 P.M. express to Milan. That was the expected rendezvous point with Buffy and Oz. If they weren’t there, he was supposed to call Giles. For all the good that would do. If they weren’t there, Angel would be on his own in his search for the heir to the Gatehouse.

  He wandered across a square, admiring the gargoyle fountain, and saw warm lights through green and yellow bottle-bottom windows.

  He pushed open the door and quickly, covertly scanned the bar, but came up with nothing out of the ordinary. Still, he was a stranger, and there was a large mirror over the bar itself. He moved to a table out of range and sat, so that no one would notice that he cast no reflection. It was a form of self-awareness that had been instinctive over the years.

  After a few minutes a young woman sauntered over to him. She had short red hair and a large emerald-colored stud in her nose. She eyed him appreciatively, then spoke to him in Italian. He was able to decipher that she was asking for his order, so he told her he wanted a Campari. Then she shook her head and pointed to a short, wiry man seated at the bar, who turned slowly and faced Angel.

  Angel’s lips parted in shock. He had seen that man before.

  In Sunnydale.

  The man slid off the stool and walked to Angel’s table. He held a glass in his hand, which he raised in Angel’s direction. He said a few words to the waitress. She answered, “Campari,” then scooted away.

  “Signor Angel,” the man said, touching his chest. “Small world. I’m stunned.”

  Angel shrugged. This man had been one of the Sons of Entropy in the car that had tried to follow Buffy to the airport. They had shot their compatriot rather than allow him to spill any of their secrets to Angel.

  “Stunned.” Angel looked at him hard. “How long have you been following me?”

  The man looked offended. “Truly, I was not.”

  The waitress came with Angel’s Campari. His new companion made a great show of paying for it, but Angel said nothing.

  “No, truly, I was not,” the man repeated, “but let me take this opportunity to reason with you.”

  Angel looked at him askance.

  “Listen.” The man scooted forward on his chair, clearly eager to continue. “As
you have no doubt realized, my master is an extremely powerful man with superior knowledge of the arcane.”

  “Superior knowledge,” Angel said dryly.

  “Yes, indeed.” The man smiled. “He knows of a way to turn you—and only you, because of your soul—into a fully human man who will live out his days in peace, then die the true death.” He clapped his hands together. “No more vampire lifestyle. No more bloodlust.”

  “And in return?”

  “Well, of course you must serve him,” the man replied. “But it’s a small matter, really.” He looked thoughtful, then smiled brightly. “For example, as a token of your gratitude, you might explain to us where the Slayer is.”

  “I’m not with her anymore,” Angel said dully.

  “Oh?” The man’s voice had that quizzical singsong rhythm Angel had always despised.

  “She’s in Austria, I think,” Angel went on. “Vienna. I don’t know.” He looked away.

  “Ah. Lover’s quarrel.”

  As the man feigned sympathy, Angel became aware of movements in the bar. The patrons were shifting their positions, focusing more intently on him. He heard a click at the front door. Locked from the outside, he guessed.

  The faces on some of the other customers seemed to blur, reshape. A few looked away.

  Angel raised his eyes to the mirror. Seated in a booth to his far right, the scaly, homed face of a demon stared back at him.

  “He sees,” the demon said.

  Angel’s companion jumped up from his chair and raised his hands. At once, everyone else in the bar followed suit. Human faces melted away, revealing the truth: Angel was surrounded by monsters and demons, faces covered with scales and bony ridges and sores and hideous distortions. Bodies stooped, grew, cleft, became long, wormlike forms. They hissed, they seethed, they gazed at Angel with hunger and hatred.

  The man clapped his hands together once. His voice was calm and soft.

  “Accept my master’s most gracious offer, or be destroyed,” he said.

  With demons and monsters making an impenetrable circle around him, Angel remained in his seat. Calm. Bold. He did not stand. Did not raise his hands to defend himself.

  Instead, he smiled thinly.

  “I’ve told you where the Slayer’s gone, or at least as much as I know,” he said, staring at the man before him, one of the Sons of Entropy who had now, to Angel’s mind, become just a little too numerous.

  Angel laughed a bit, and shook his head. “But you don’t believe me, do you?” he asked.

  “On the contrary, vampire,” the acolyte said. “You have only confirmed what we already knew. The Slayer is expected in Vienna, and she will be greeted there. But there are ways you could help II Maestro, ways in which you could be useful in deceiving her. Entrapping her.”

  With a small grunt, Angel narrowed his eyes. The flesh of his face seemed to quiver, and then it changed. His brow grew heavier, jutting out, and the skin around his eyes and nose became rough and callused. His eyes blinked and when they opened again, they glowed a fierce, predatory yellow. He looked around at the monsters and demons. He watched as they snarled at him, moved into a tighter circle, their chests rising and falling as though all that held them back was this acolyte’s . . . this human’s command.

  Several of them were absolutely terrifying to behold, even for Angel.

  So fast the acolyte barely flinched, Angel launched himself from the chair, grabbed the man by his thick, graying hair, and slammed his face down on the table in front of him. His nose shattered and blood jetted from one nostril.

  “You son of a bitch,” Angel whispered into his ear as the demons and monsters screeched a horrid chorus but did not move any closer. “Your boss should have told you to do your homework. I’m a dead man. You can dress that up however you like, magick can do a lot of things, but it can’t make me alive again! And even if it could, I’m not a man who can be bought. You should have known that coming in.”

  With a roar of terrible rage, Angel hefted the whimpering acolyte by collar and belt, lifted the man over his head, and ran at the circle of horrors that surrounded them. They parted for him, staring mutely, and Angel used all his strength to hurl the man over the bar. The acolyte’s shout of fear was cut off as he slammed into the mirror, which shattered into a thousand silver fragments, destroying the monstrous image of the room around it.

  The shards fell like deadly rain, many of them slicing into the fallen acolyte’s body where he lay behind the bar.

  A black wave seemed to sweep across the room, invisible but tangible. Angel’s hair ruffled with a sickly breeze. He turned, his entire body cold and silent as stone, without even the illusion of life, of breathing and warmth, that vampires so often used to camouflage themselves. He turned to face the monsters.

  The monsters. Which were now nothing more than common street thugs and local rowdies. There were several Sons of Entropy among them, he saw, but even they only stared at Angel in horror, stared at the flaring yellow eyes and the lips curled back to reveal gleaming fangs. Angel seethed, furious not only that they would think him a likely traitor but that the idiot spellcaster the Sons of Entropy had put on his tail had actually believed Angel had lived nearly two and a half centuries without being able to tell a real demon from an illusory one.

  Demons stank. The only odor coming off these goons was that of stale whiskey and old beer.

  Still, they stared.

  Angel was stooped slightly, almost like an animal. Now he stood straight and glared at them all.

  “You’ve been led to your deaths,” he said grimly, his voice thick with anger and the lust for blood. “The first man I catch dies the fastest. The last is my supper.”

  He took a single step and they broke and ran, crashing through the windows of the place and battering down the door from within. Only the few Sons of Entropy tried to stay behind, and even they were swept back by the tide of fear. One of the acolytes broke free and brought a long, wicked-looking blade out of his jacket, then swung it around toward Angel’s face.

  Angel took the blade away, and then gave it back to him. As decoration. It adorned the man’s chest amid gouts of spurting blood.

  The vampire walked on. Already most of the thugs had fled. Two acolytes remained, shoving aside the others now, the freelance talent they’d hired for aid.

  They looked terrified.

  A moment later, Angel gave them reason to be.

  By the time he relaxed and his face returned to normal, he was alone in the bar.

  * * *

  “Milano,” Oz said. Buffy half-expected him to pull a guidebook from his pack and begin rattling off all the things to do and see in the city. But Oz was quiet, and she was grateful.

  They were sitting inside a cafe in a huge park. The cafe was very old-world, crowded with plaster statues and cupids and lots of oil paintings on the walls. It was pricey, too, and Buffy felt out of place in her traveling clothes. It was called Angelina, and it was where Angel had promised to try to rendezvous with them. How he knew of a cafe in Milan, Italy, with an in-joke for a name, Buffy did not know. Maybe he had a lot of guidebooks, too.

  The thing was, he’d been due almost an hour and a half ago. And he hadn’t shown.

  Oz sipped his coffee and said, “He’s taking a train. Maybe it was late.”

  “Don’t they all run on time over here?” she asked, toying with her silverware.

  “Maybe not.” He smiled at her gently. “He’ll show.”

  She flashed him a lopsided smile. “I have a strange feeling of déjà vu here, Oz, only you would be one of my girlfriends back in L.A. and we would possibly be discussing a boy named Tyler. Or maybe Jeff. And we would be at the Cineplex, me officially not caring if he showed.”

  He smiled back. “You’re okay,” he said, then shrugged. “I don’t mean I think you’re okay. Which I do. And you are. What I’m trying to say is that you’re strong. Slayer strong and person strong.”

  She blushed, pleased by the comp
liment. She’d never really talked to Oz much. It was nice.

  “Sometimes I feel pretty not-strong,” she confessed.

  “So did Superman,” Oz replied.

  After a time, he said, “It’s been bugging me that I don’t have a guitar. I keep thinking I should be practicing. It’s a mundane thought, but it keeps occurring to me.”

  She nodded. “Dealing with an end-of-the-world scenario can really make you schizo if you think about it too much. It’s like being the Slayer, only more so. But this is me on a daily basis: on the one hand, I’m wondering if that pair of suede boots I want have gone on sale, and on the other I’m wondering if I’ll be able to run through the graveyard with them on. Plus if I can get blood out of them. And I’m wondering all this while I’m kickboxing with some demon.”

  “Hmm. Doubtful.”

  She leaned forward. “The problem being, of course, that I want the suede boots, just like all the other girls. And none of them are worrying about getting blood out of them.

  “And sometimes I wonder if I’ll have time to do my homework while I’m staking some vamp.” She wrinkled her nose. “But usually not. Usually I’m thinking about suede boots.”

  “Guitar chords,” Oz rejoined. “And Willow.”

  “You’re worried about her,” Buffy said gently.

  “Full circle.” He picked up his coffee. “Angel. Willow. Worrying.”

  “Giles,” she murmured, and picked up her coffee. “Don’t you love these word association games?”

  They sat together in silence for a moment. Then Oz suggested, “Walk in the park?” They had been sitting in the cafe for over two hours. Which was actually okay—everyone else had been sitting in the cafe for at least that long. It would make Buffy nervous to live in Europe. They did an awful lot of chitchatting and smoking. No one seemed to get much done.

  On the other hand, it would be cool to go to school here and not get much done. If you spoke the lingo.

  Buffy rose gratefully. Oz looked at the bill and raised his brows. “This lire thing. It makes you feel like you’re spending your life savings on two coffees and one strangely shaped piece of bread.”