Buffy shivered, turned to Giles, and hugged him. Willow put her hands over her ears.
“She’s not listening to you, Great Pumpkin!” Xander shouted. “You are so toast!”
“Over,” Willow agreed, and looked at Buffy.
Buffy frowned.
“I don’t like that look,” Willow said. “I know that look.”
“Giles?” Buffy said. “What’s he talking about? I thought if we torched him, he’d, y’know . . . scarecrow, fire? As in, finito completo?”
Giles sighed, reached two fingers under his glasses to rub the smoke from his eyes.
“I’m afraid not, Buffy. He’s telling the truth. Unless we can trap the spirit, the actual demon Samhain, into that scarecrow body, destroying it will only stop him for this year. He’ll be free to come at you again someday,” Giles explained apologetically. “But we’ll be better prepared next time. We hadn’t any idea what we were facing, but now that we do, we will be ready. And one must remember that he gets weaker as the years pass and faith in his power withers.”
Buffy stared at Giles. Then she glanced up at the window of the burning barn, where the green flames of the laughing pumpkin mouth were still blazing, mocking her. Threatening gleefully.
“We are not pressing pause,” she said, determined. “We are pushing the stop button.”
The Slayer held out her hand. “Xander, give me your Swiss Army knife.”
Xander pulled the requested multi-purpose and much-valued had-it-since-third-grade knife from his pocket and reluctantly handed it over.
“Giles, give me the ward thingy,” Buffy demanded, and held out her other hand.
“What are you going to do?” Giles asked.
“If this magic is a ward, a kind of barrier for him, do you think it’ll trap him in that scarecrow body, kind of pin him in there?” she asked.
“Well, there is a certain logic to that, but there’s no way to know that. You’re just guessing!” Giles snapped. Clearly he was grasping her plan. And not liking it, because blazing infernos and really pissed-off demons were not healthy for Slayers and other living things.
“Uh, Buffy, going back in there would be an extreme lock-me-up-for-my-own-good, okay? Just wanted to get that straight,” Xander babbled.
“Buffy,” Willow said quietly. “Please don’t.”
They didn’t want her to do it. Buffy didn’t want to do it, either. The fear was still there. Samhain wasn’t gone yet, the scarecrow body not destroyed. Her stomach churned and she chewed her lip, fighting off the terror.
The yew stick was thin enough, but too long. She sawed the back end of it off, then used the knife to whittle a point on the wax-coated, burning end. Her fingers got a little singed, but the magickal flame did not go out.
“How much time do I have before this thing is useless?” she asked. “How will I know?”
Giles shrugged. “When the fire goes out, you’ll know,” he said. “I’m sorry I can’t do better than that.”
Buffy finished whittling, stared hard at Giles. “You’ve done great, Giles. Saved my life. A lot of lives, probably. I wanted to run away tonight. I did run away. I let you down—”
“Never—” Giles began, but Buffy went on.
“I’m not going to run again. Not ever,” she vowed. “I’m the Slayer. No matter what. You’ve never told me how long you expect me to live, but you have told me I have a duty. I’m going to honor that, Giles.”
Buffy picked up the crossbow, which Xander had carried down from the orchard, and slotted the sharpened yew stick into the weapon. It was larger than the bolts the crossbow usually took, and not totally straight, but it would do.
It had to.
She turned and marched into the burning barn. When the others called after her, she pretended not to hear.
Samhain stood, burning, at the edge of the hayloft and looked down at her with fury. The entire loft was in flames and would probably come crashing down any second. It didn’t matter. The demon had to be destroyed forever. She wasn’t even certain that her plan would work. But she had to try.
“I knew you’d come back,” Samhain roared, his voice penetrating the deafening crackle of the inferno around them. “No true Slayer could walk away from this final confrontation. That’s why Erin Randall died more than four hundred years ago, and why you will die now!”
Screeching, trailing fire, parts of his scarecrow body dropping to the floor of the barn, Samhain launched himself from the hayloft. Straw claws lashed at Buffy.
Buffy tried to get the crossbow up in time, but she was too slow. The smoke was heavy, her eyes were tearing, and Samhain dropped in front of her, slashing her face and arms with razor-sharp straw fingers. She dropped the crossbow.
Blood ran from the cuts on her forehead. She didn’t know how deep they were, but she didn’t want to know just now. There was blood on her arms as well. The Slayer ignored them.
She retreated a way across the barn, and Samhain gave chase. He was burning, falling apart, and he had little time in which he could still use his body to destroy her. The problem was, Buffy had exactly the same amount of time in which to destroy him before he was freed by his own destruction, freed to return in another year.
“Ssssad in a way, to see you die. But that’s the wonderful thing about Slayers,” Samhain hissed. “There’s always a Chosen One.”
“That’s right,” Buffy sneered. “Crunch all you want, we’ll make more.”
He lunged at her. Buffy sidestepped the raking claws; she kicked at the arm and it separated from Samhain’s body at the elbow. Flaming straw and clothing landed at her feet.
The pumpkin king hissed and went for her again, green flame within the pumpkin head, green fire burning inside the orange. Buffy dropped to her hands and kicked at his scarecrow knee. With the crackling pop of a blazing log, the knee buckled, burning embers flying.
Buffy had hoped Samhain would fall. He did not. The pumpkin that was his face blackened and bubbled. One half of his head was caved in, green flame diminishing.
“You’re fast, little girl,” the demon sneered. “Destroy this body, die here in the barn with me, burned alive. I’ll still come back.”
Buffy stared at him, the fear threatening to overwhelm her again. She pushed it away, determined. The loft crashed down and she turned her eyes away, held up a hand to block the burning wood and hay that flew into the air.
Samhain came for her then, dragging his ruined leg, but still fast. Buffy was faster. She leaped over him as he dove for her, flipped in the air, and landed in a crouch right next to her crossbow, which was hidden from his view by a piece of charred wood.
The pumpkin king, the demon lord of Samhuinn, roared with pleasure and the pain of his burning host form. But he was triumphant. He would return. And to kill Buffy, all he had to do was keep her inside the barn. She could hear the burning beams above begin to crack and buckle.
“Die with me, Slayer,” he whispered.
“Ever the romantic,” Buffy snarled, and aimed the crossbow at the scarecrow’s chest.
The remaining pumpkin eye widened as Samhain saw the magickal flame which still burned at the end of her crossbow bolt, saw the white candle wax, and knew what it was she had planned.
“Trick or treat,” Buffy said grimly.
She pulled the trigger; the bolt flew impossibly straight and true and embedded itself in Samhain’s chest.
“Noooooooo!” the demon screamed, and grabbed for the end of the shaft with his remaining claw, but could not remove it.
She heard the screeching of the ceiling giving way, and ran for the open doors. Just as the whole inferno collapsed in on itself, she dove over the symbol Giles had etched in the dirt, rolling to safety, choking on the smoke she’d inhaled, soot on her face.
Buffy lay on the ground, staring at the fire, listening to the king of Halloween scream in fury and pain. Giles, Xander, and Willow helped her to her feet and she leaned on them as they moved a safer distance from the burning barn.
“Whoa, pyromania,” Xander said in an awed voice.
“I’m not sure how we shall explain this to the owner of this place,” Giles said.
“Wait, uh-uh,” Buffy replied, grabbed Giles and Willow by the hand, and began dragging them away. Xander followed.
“Buffy, what are you doing?” Giles asked. “We cannot simply leave.”
“Sure we can!” Buffy said, then went into another fit of coughs.
“Can,” Xander agreed.
“Have to,” Willow added.
“I’ve been branded an arsonist once already, Giles,” Buffy snapped. “That’s why my mom and I moved here to the Hellmouth, remember? I’d rather avoid another police investigation.”
“Absolutely,” Willow agreed. “I mean, you live in the mouth of hell. If you got caught again, I’d hate to think where you’d end up next time.”
“Indeed,” Giles remarked thoughtfully, then turned to Buffy.
“Well, Miss Summers,” he said. “I suppose you’ve learned a lesson this evening, yes? Perhaps you’ll think twice in the future before complaining about a lull in the Slaying business.”
They all stared at him.
Buffy was the first to laugh.
It felt good.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Christopher Golden’s novels include the vampire epics Of Saints and Shadows and Angel Souls & Devil Hearts; the best-selling trilogy X-Men: Mutant Empire, featuring the world-famous Marvel Comics characters; Hellboy: The Lost Army; and the new hardcover Battlestar Galactica novel, Armageddon, which he co-authored with actor Richard Hatch.
Christopher is the regular writer on the best-selling comic book series Shi, from Crusade Entertainment, and his own Facelift, from Caliber. He has also worked on such comic book titles as Wolverine, X-Man, The Crow, Daredevil/Shi, Spider-Man Unlimited, Blade, and Vampirella.
He was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his wife, Connie, and their sons, Nicholas and Daniel. He is currently at work on the hardcover novel X-Men: Codename Wolverine and the third in his vampiric Shadow Saga, Of Masques and Martyrs.
Four-time Bram Stoker Award winner Nancy Holder has sold twenty-three novels, including Highlander: Measure of a Man, based on the TV series, and Dead in the Water. She has also written over a hundred and fifty short stories; game fiction, most notably for FTL Games’ DungeonMaster series; and TV commercials and comic books in Japan. She has been translated into over two dozen languages.
She dropped out of high school at the age of sixteen to become a ballet dancer in Germany, and eventually went on to graduate from the University of California with a degree in communications. She also lived in Japan for three years.
She currently lives ninety-three miles south of Disneyland (in San Diego) with her husband, Wayne, their daughter, Belle, and their Border collies, Mr. Ron, Maggie, and Dot. In her spare time, she watches the worst horror movies she can find and works out at the gym.
Christopher and Nancy first met over the phone when Christopher bought an essay from Nancy for his Stoker Award–winning collection of horror film essays, Cut!: Horror Writers on Horror Film. They met in person two years later in a Chinese food restaurant off Times Square in New York. They wrote this novel via the internet, and are already hard at work on another project together.
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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.
AN SIMON PULSE Original
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™ and copyright © 1997 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.
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First Archway Paperback printing November 1997
ISBN: 0-671-01713-6
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