The Angel Chronicles, Volume 1

by Nancy Holder

  She detected the merest hint of self-loathing; she raised her chin slightly and asked, “What changed?”

  “Fed on a girl,” he told her. “About your age. Beautiful.” He looked off into the distance for a moment. “Dumb as a post. But a favorite among her clan.”

  “Her clan?” Buffy repeated, unsure of his word choice.

  “Romani,” he explained. “Gypsies. The elders conjured the perfect punishment for me.” He waited a beat. “They restored my soul.”

  “What,” she asked, regaining a bit of her fire, “they were all out of boils and blinding torment?”

  “When you become a vampire, the demon takes your body but it doesn’t get your soul. That’s gone. No conscience, no remorse. It’s an easy way to live.”

  She remembered how he had asked her if it felt good to hate him. Simple.

  He stood in the weak light, surrounded by darkness, facing an armed Slayer who was bent on revenge. And yet he made no move to attack, nor to escape. Instead, he said, “You have no idea what it’s like to have done the things I’ve done and to care. I haven’t fed on a living human being since that day.”

  “So you started with my mom?” she flung at him.

  “I didn’t bite her,” he said very seriously.

  She was taken aback. “Then why didn’t you say something?”

  “I wanted to.” For a moment Buffy tried to pretend that he was answering her question. But he was confessing that he had wanted to bite her mother. As if to underscore that thought, he said, “I can walk like a man but I’m not one.” He paused. “I wanted to kill you tonight.”

  She knew that. She had wanted to kill him, too. She looked down, laid down her weapon, and walked to him, tilting her head slightly, offering her neck.

  “Go ahead,” she said. With all her heart, she prayed he would not attack her. With all her soul, she believed he wouldn’t, and yet, every ounce of her being protested the way she left herself defenseless. She was the Slayer, and he was a vampire.

  He remained silent, gazing at her with his haunted eyes. Something lifted for a brief instant as the two of them stared long and hard at each other.

  She nodded slightly. “Not as easy as it looks,” she said.

  He almost smiled.

  “Sure it is,” came a voice from the shadows.

  * * *

  Xander, Willow, and Giles raced through the night, searching for Buffy.

  Willow said, “We’re near the Bronze. What now?”

  Giles answered, “Keep looking for her.”

  “I have a question,” Xander ventured, worried and frustrated. “What if we find her and she’s fighting Angel or some of his friends? What the heck are we going to do about it?”

  No one answered.

  No one had an answer.

  * * *

  Darla strolled toward Angel and Buffy with her hands clasped behind her back, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She drawled, “Do you know what the saddest thing in the world is?”

  Buffy shrugged. “Bad hair on top of that outfit?”

  “To love someone who used to love you.” She glared at Buffy.

  Buffy glanced in surprise at Angel. “You guys were … involved?”

  “For several generations.” Darla clearly enjoyed telling Buffy all this.

  Buffy tried to regroup. She remembered Darla now. She was the one who had lured Xander’s friend Jesse to the cemetary on Buffy’s first night in Sunnydale. She led Jesse to his death. “Well, when you’ve been around since Columbus, you’re bound to pile up a few exes. You are older than him, right?” She leaned forward, sneering at Darla. “Just between us girls, you’re looking a little worn around the eyes.”

  Darla bared her fangs in an evil smile. “I made him,” she said triumphantly, as if she knew this would be even harder for Buffy to hear. “And there was a time when we shared everything.” She focused her full attention on Angel. “Wasn’t there, Angelus?”

  Angel said nothing. Darla’s smile faded. “You had a chance to come home. To rule with me in the Master’s court for a thousand years. But you threw that away because of her.” She said in disbelief, “You love someone who hates us.”

  Buffy tried to hide her surprise. Angel loves me? Had he told Darla? How else would she know?

  She glanced at Angel, who looked worriedly back at her. Because he’s afraid for me? Or afraid for me to know he cares about me?

  “You’re sick,” Darla told Angel. “And you’ll always be sick, and you’ll always remember what it was like to watch her die.” She spoke in a singsong tone very like the Master’s.

  She turned to Buffy, saying, “You don’t think I came alone, do you?”

  Buffy replied, “I know I didn’t.” With a flash of movement, she stomped on the crossbow, sending it flying up into her hands.

  Darla chuckled. “Scary,” she admitted. From behind her back, she brought forward two enormous revolvers—.357s, Buffy guessed; they hadn’t studied firearms much—and pointed them directly at her.

  “Scarier,” she said, and began firing with both hands.

  Buffy dove under the pool table. Angel took a bullet to the shoulder and slammed into the wall with the crossbow bolt stuck into it. With a grunt of pain, he slid to the floor.

  “Angel!” Buffy cried.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Darla said easily. “Bullets can’t kill vampires. They can hurt them like hell, but—”

  She fired at Buffy again.

  * * *

  In the warehouse alley, Xander and the others froze.

  “Did you just hear—”

  Gunshots. They all heard them.

  They all ran toward the Bronze.

  * * *

  Buffy crouched behind the pool table, listening to Darla rant as she closed in. “So many body parts, so few bullets. Let’s begin with the kneecaps. No fun dancing without them…”

  Bullets hailed in Buffy’s direction. Buffy summoned her courage, popped up, and got off a crossbow shot. It slammed into Darla’s chest, and Darla doubled forward. For a moment, Buffy thought she was home free. She spared a glance in Angel’s direction. He was pulling himself up by holding on to the crossbow bolt in the wall.

  Then Darla straightened back up. She said, “Close. But no heart.”

  She pulled the bolt out of her chest and dropped it onto the floor.

  * * *

  Willow, Giles, and Xander entered the Bronze through the broken window on the second floor and made their way to the balcony. They all looked in horror at the destruction below.

  Xander whispered, “We need to distract her.” He saw at the same time that Buffy did that Buffy was out of bolts. “Fast!”

  Willow shouted frantically, “Buffy, it wasn’t Angel who attacked your mom. It was Darla!”

  Darla whirled in their direction, raining bullets on them. They ducked.

  * * *

  On the main floor of the Bronze, Angel, breathing hard through the pain, pulled the crossbow bolt out of the wall.

  * * *

  Darla jumped and landed with both feet on the pool table. Buffy rose and yanked the table toward her, knocking Darla off balance. Darla slammed onto her back as Buffy now pushed the table with all her might. Darla’s guns blazed as the table flew backward; she tracked Buffy’s course as Buffy ran to the Bronze’s coffee counter and threw herself over it. The glass case shattered above her.

  * * *

  A distraction.

  Giles spied a light board nearby. He scrambled over and started pounding and punching the buttons. Spot lights flashed on, and then a pulsating strobe.

  For a moment, the vampire named Darla was disoriented, and Giles rejoiced. But then she advanced on Buffy again, her movements nightmarishly jerky in the strobe’s relentless flash. She fired at Buffy, who was huddled behind the bar. Upside-down glassware exploded like crystalline land mines as Buffy dodged the bullets.

  * * *

  “Come on, Buffy,” Darla urged. “Take it like a ma
n.”

  Darla fired again, grinning, delighted, as if victory was almost hers. And then, in the wild strobe light, Giles saw Angel behind her, a crossbow bolt in his hand. He rose without warning and plunged the arrow into Darla’s back.

  * * *

  Giles shut off the strobe. All that remained was moonlight and silence.

  * * *

  Darla staggered. The guns clattered to the floor. She turned.

  “Angel?” she murmured in disbelief.

  She grabbed onto him for a moment, but only a moment. Angel watched as she collapsed, then exploded into a scream and dust.

  His sire. His lover. She had made him, but someone had made her into a demon first. And no one had given her back her soul. And, in the old days, how they had raged together. It was she who had given him the Gypsy girl, never dreaming it would mean the end of them, or that it would bring them to this night when he would destroy her forever.

  Buffy, the beautiful and courageous human who loved him, rose from behind the counter and looked at Angel with huge eyes. He didn’t know what to say to her. He wasn’t sure he could speak. With the death of Darla, he had crossed many lines. He had gone too far. And he could never go back.

  Slowly, he turned and walked away.

  * * *

  The Master howled with rage and despair. He wielded his killing spear in blind fury, smashing whatever lay in his path, sweeping an enormous candelabra to the floor of his prison. He raged in a frenzy, until finally, overcome with grief, he fell to the ground.

  “Darla,” he wept.

  The Anointed One approached him, perfectly calm. He said, “Forget her.”

  One last ounce of outrage flashed through the Master as he looked at his secret weapon and said, “How dare you. She was my favorite. For four hundred years—”

  “She was weak,” his young warrior stated flatly. “We don’t need her. I’ll bring you the Slayer.”

  The Master was spent, dejected. “But to lose her to Angel. He was to sit on my right come the day. And now…” He trailed off.

  “They’re all against you,” Collin said. “But soon you shall rise, and when you do…” He gently rubbed the Master’s shoulder and offered him his hand. “We’ll kill them all.”

  The Master was comforted. Managing a brave smile, he took the Anointed One’s outstretched hand and squeezed it.

  EPILOGUE

  Buffy felt odd returning to the Bronze. Open for business again, it was packed with people, music, and laughter. So different from the last time she had been here.

  And the last time she had seen Angel.

  She wore the cross he had given her the first night they had met. It was a treasured possession now, proof that he wasn’t like all the other vampires in her strange, scary world.

  Xander said with mock enthusiasm, “Ah, the postfumigation party.”

  Buffy asked, “What’s the difference between this and the prefumigation party?”

  Xander replied, “Much heartier cockroaches.”

  Buffy couldn’t help but look around for Angel. Willow must have noticed, for she said kindly, “No word from Angel?”

  Buffy tried for a light tone. “Naw. It’s weird, though. In a way I feel like he’s still watching me.”

  Willow kept smiling. She said, “Well, in a way, he sort of is. In the way that he’s right over there.”

  Buffy and Xander turned at the exact same time. Buffy composed herself and walked toward the vampire she loved.

  * * *

  Willow saw the dashed look on Xander’s face. As they reached a table, he deliberately chose the chair that faced away from Buffy and Angel.

  He said, “I don’t need to watch because I’m not threatened. I’m just going to look this way.”

  * * *

  Angel stood alone, as always. Though she was set apart as the Slayer, Buffy knew she had so much more than he did: her friends, her Watcher, her mother … and a chance, now and then, to blow off some steam. Angel had none of this. And she suspected that now that he had killed Darla, the vampire who had changed him, he would be hunted as fiercely as she was.

  Thinking all these things, and of how much she loved him, Buffy came to him.

  For a moment, neither spoke. Then Angel said, “I just wanted to see if you were okay. And your mother.”

  “We’re both good. You?”

  He laughed shortly. “If I can go a little while without being shot or stabbed, I’ll be all right.” Then he hesitated, as if that wasn’t true. “Look,” he said, “this can’t—”

  “Ever be anything,” she finished for him. “I know.” And she did know. She tried to conceal her pain with a joke. “For one thing, you’re like two hundred and twenty-four years older than I am.”

  His smile was faint, as if he appreciated her attempt to make this easy on both of them. “I just have to … I have to walk away from this.”

  Buffy said, almost in a whisper, “I know. Me, too.”

  They stood staring at each other. Hesitantly, she added, “One of us has to go here.”

  “I know.”

  Still neither left. Then Angel bent his head to kiss her. She kissed him back, willing warmth into his cold, soft lips, thrilling at the tenderness of his kiss. She put her arms around his neck and allowed herself this moment, even if she never saw him again.

  * * *

  Xander demanded, “What’s going on?” He was obviously dying of curiosity … and jealousy, Willow had to admit to herself, but she bet herself an extra hour of surfing on the Net tonight that he would not succumb and turn around.

  “Nothing,” she assured him, acting as lookout.

  “Well, as long as they’re not kissing.” He laughed uncomfortably.

  Willow said nothing, only smiled as her best friend, the Vampire Slayer, lost herself in Angel’s arms.

  * * *

  The kiss ended. Buffy looked up at Angel and asked gently, “Are you okay?”

  He seemed to struggle for words. “It’s just…”

  Her eyes welled. “Painful. I know.” Then she summoned the courage to say what must be said, “See you around?”

  She turned and walked away.

  * * *

  And pain played over the face of Angel, born into the night as Angelus, as he watched the Slayer go. But her mark was on him: the cross she wore around her neck—the cross he himself had given her—had burned deep and hot into his chest.

  As his love for her burned deep and hot into his soul.

  THE SECOND CHRONICLE:

  REPTILE BOY

  PROLOGUE

  It was not a quiet night for the Slayer. A high-pitched wailing rose incessantly around her, reminding her of some demon, vampire, or other monster in the chocolate box that was the Hellmouth, begging for its life.

  And echoing this thought, Xander asked, concerned, “Is she dying?”

  He and Buffy lounged on Buffy’s bed on either side of Willow, who sat on the floor clutching a cow doll as her friends braided her hair and stared in wonderment at the TV.

  And on said TV, thanks to the glory of cable and its many offspring, the fringe channels of the night—what music they make!—the three stared without much comprehension at an Indian woman as she warbled in a very personally meaningful way into her telephone.

  Buffy said in awe, “I think she’s singing.”

  Xander ran with that. “To a telephone, in Hindi. Now that’s entertainment.” He stared. “Why is she singing?”

  Willow, wide-eyed, solved the puzzle. “She’s sad because her lover gave her twelve gold coins but then the wizard cut open the bag of salt and now the dancing minions have no place to put their big Maypole …” she gestured, as if searching for the right word, “fish thing.”

  “Uh-huh,” Xander said, still staring. “Why is she singing?”

  Buffy was likewise stumped. “Her lover? I thought that was her chiropractor.”

  Willow never took her eyes off the screen. “Because of that thing he did with her fee
t? No. That was personal.”

  The piercing singing was apparently in no danger of approaching a grand finale. Xander said, “And we thought ’cause we didn’t have any money or any-place to go, this’d be a lackluster evening.”

  Willow brightened. “I know! We could go to the Bronze, sneak in our own tea bags, and ask for hot water.”

  Xander smiled faintly. “Hop off the outlaw train, Will, before you land us all in jail.”

  Buffy cut in, “I, for one, am giddy and up. There’s a kind of hush all over Sunnydale, no demons or vampires to slay, I’m here with my friends,” she leaned toward the TV, “so how does the water buffalo fit in again?”

  * * *

  Across town, there was no singing in a sprawling, two-story California stucco mansion. The stillness of the night was shattered as a pretty girl crashed through the door on the second story, flung herself over the balcony, tumbled to a vast expanse of manicured lawn, and ran for her life.

  A hooded figure darted from the ruined door onto the balcony, looked down, and ran back into the house. Within seconds, several dark figures in hooded robes emerged from other windows and doors like malevolent wraiths and chased the fleeing girl.

  Panting with fear and exertion, the girl bolted into the woods. She ran fast, but her pursuers were faster. They were closing the gap between them as she darted under tree branches and flew over roots. Under a large tree, she fell and rolled, then got to her feet and heaved herself up onto a stone wall with all her might.

  As she dropped down to the other side, three hooded figures clambered over the wall right behind her.

  She flew through the graveyard now, the moonlight highlighting the nightmarish setting and the names on the stones. Home free, she prayed, as she passed a strange, pyramid-shaped crypt. I am going to live.

  Then suddenly, another robed figure stepped out from behind a monument and grabbed her. She screamed and struggled against him.

  “Callie,” the figure chided her. “Callie, where are you going?”

  It was Richard, the good-looking blond boy who had enticed her to the frat house with the promise of a good time. “The party’s just getting started,” he continued easily.