BUFFY STEPPED INTO THE MAUSOLEUM AND THE VAMPIRES FROZE.
“You know, I just wanted to start over. Be like everybody else. Have some friends, maybe a dog. . . . But no. You had to come here. You couldn’t go suck on some other town.”
Before Buffy could go on, a voice came from the shadows behind her. “You’re wasting my time,” Luke said calmly.
“Hey,” Buffy retorted, “I had other plans, too, okay?”
The vampire shoved a heavy stone slab straight at her, but Buffy leaped over it and jumped on top. With one swift movement, she flipped over and planted both feet solidly on Luke’s chest. The momentum caused both of them to fall, but Buffy managed to get up first, pulling out her stake and driving it toward his chest. Luke’s hand shot out and grabbed it just before it made contact.
“You think you can stop me?” Luke’s face was twisted with rage. “Stop us?” He squeezed his fist. The stake splintered like a matchstick.
Victorious now, he loomed over her, contemplating her with gleeful animal hunger.
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to Frances Wenner with love
for teaching me how to slay
all those creatures of the dark
Virginia, 1866: The frequent disappearance of local Civil War widows shocked an already grieving community. These events ended when Lucy Hanover arrived in town.
Chicago, May 1927: Forty-one bodies were found near Union Station. Shortly after the arrival of a certain young woman, the mysterious murders stopped.
FOR EACH GENERATION
THERE IS ONLY ONE SLAYER
Now it’s starting all over again. . . .
PROLOGUE
Sunnydale High School looked different at night.
In fact, it looked almost scary.
Classes had been over for hours, and now the buildings lay empty and eerily silent, walls gleaming dark in the moonlight. Shadows clung to the stairwells; rooms gaped along the corridors like so many abandoned caves. When a window suddenly shattered inside one of them, the echo seemed to hang there forever, even as a hand thrust beyond the broken glass, fumbling with the lock and sliding the window up.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?”
The girl who spoke looked around nervously as her male companion climbed through, then reached back to help her.
“It’s a great idea!” he insisted. “Come on.”
He led her out into the hallway. It was even blacker out here than the classroom had been, and the girl threw him a timid glance.
“You go to school here?”
“Used to,” he said. “On top of the gym, it’s so cool—you can see the whole town.”
“I don’t want to go up there.”
His body moved against hers. “Oh, you can’t wait, huh?”
“We’re just gonna get in trouble,” she protested, but he only pressed closer.
“Count on it.”
As he kissed her, he felt the tensing of her shoulders, felt her pull away from him, saw the genuine look of fear upon her face.
“What was that?”
“What was what?” he asked impatiently.
“I heard a noise.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Maybe it’s something . . .”
“Maybe it’s some Thing . . .” he deadpanned.
“That’s not funny.”
Grudgingly the boy surveyed their surroundings. The hall was still dark, still completely deserted, yet the shadows seemed to have thickened somehow, creeping up on them while they hadn’t been watching. He could feel the girl cowering close behind him.
“Hello . . .” he called softly, teasingly.
Silence.
“There’s nobody here,” he said at last, turning back to her.
But she still sounded frightened. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay,” she murmured.
And then, as her face contorted into a horrible shape, she bared her fangs, burying them swiftly into his neck.
CHAPTER 1
Buffy was lost.
Wandering through a place she didn’t know and didn’t want to know.
A subterranean chamber, perhaps, or the hidden lair of some horrible beast—this dark, forgotten place of dampness and decay. She moved on through the gloom, wary and confused, trying to figure out where she was, how to find her way out again. And yet while one small part of her mind knew she was dreaming—had to be dreaming—another part warned her that this place was all too real, all too horribly close.
Images jumped out at her, then faded again almost instantly, leaving only the vaguest of memories in their wake. She saw candles flickering over a deep red pool . . . clawing fingers through a glow of fire . . . drawings of beasts and the silvery glint of a cross. Demonic laughter echoed among crumbling headstones—faceless figures stalked her—and then suddenly, startlingly clear, she saw a book, a very old book with the word VAMPYR engraved upon its cover . . .
From far, far away she could feel herself tossing and turning upon her bed, tossing and struggling even as the dream pulled her deeper and deeper into its spell. Without warning a shadow rose up behind her, foul and evil, a shadow black as death, roaring through her head, through her veins—“I’ll take you . . . like a cancer . . . I’ll get inside you and eat my way out—”
Buffy’s eyes flew open.
Even in the light of morning, it was as if the nightmare still lingered, the horror of it, the danger of it . . .
She sat up in bed, blinking against the brightness that streamed in through her window. She was awake now; she was perfectly safe. This was her room . . . her house . . . her reality—
“Buffy?”
“I’m up, Mom.”
“Don’t want to be late for your first day!” Joyce Summers called from the hallway.
“No,” Buffy mumbled to herself. “Wouldn’t want that.”
She heard the uncertainty in her own voice. She sat up and stared around the room, at the half-decorated walls, the unpacked boxes stacked in one corner.
Then with a sigh, she forced the last dregs of nightmare from her mind and got up to face the day.
* * *
“Now, you have a good time,” Joyce Summers said, watching Buffy get out of the car. “I know you’ll make friends right away. Think positive. And, honey . . .” she paused, sounding hopeful. “Try not to get kicked out.”
“I promise.”
As her mother drove off, Buffy stood for a moment, sizing up her new situation. The weather this morning was Southern California-perfect, and throngs of students were laughing and talking as they crammed their way leisurely into Sunnydale High. Well . . . might as well get this over with.
Sighing, Buffy started in, so deep in her thoughts that she didn’t notice the cute boy on the skateboard.
“Coming through . . .” Xander announced, weaving his way recklessly through the crowds. “Coming through . . . not certain how to stop . . .”
He was tall and dark-haired, with a look of shaggy indifference about him, and as he headed toward the entrance, he suddenly spied a girl he’d never seen before.
She was short and petite, with dark blond hair and big blue eyes, and her face had that heart-shaped cuteness that he never could resist. She was wearing boots and
a really short skirt, and as Xander passed her he craned his neck for a better view and completely forgot about navigating.
At the last possible second he managed to miss the steps, but only by ducking beneath a railing. He landed in a heap on the pavement, and as a familiar face ran up to help him, he looked at her with a grin that was all charm.
“Willow!” Xander exclaimed, picking himself up again, not at all bothered by his dramatic entrance. “You’re so very much the person I wanted to see.”
“Really?” Willow asked hopefully.
She was considered plain and totally boring by Sunnydale standards; it was bad enough that her nose was always buried in some book, but even worse were the rumors that her mother actually picked out her clothes. Yet a keen intelligence shone in Willow’s soft brown eyes, and her smile was poignantly sweet—and as Xander came toward her now, she brightened at his attention. Xander, as usual, didn’t seem to notice.
“Yeah,” he said. “You know, I kind of had a problem with the math.”
Willow quickly hid her disappointment. “Which part?”
“The math. Can you help me tonight? Please? Be my study buddy?”
“Well,” Willow considered cheerfully, “what’s in it for me?”
“A shiny nickel . . .”
“Okay. Do you have Theories in Trig? You should check it out.”
Xander looked baffled. “Check it out?”
“From the library. Where the books live.”
“Right.” He grinned again. “I’m there. See, I want to change.”
As they went inside and pushed their way along the packed corridor, they saw their friend Jesse approaching.
“Hey,” Jesse nodded, and Xander raised his arm in a casual wave.
“Jesse! What’s what?”
Jesse didn’t hesitate. “New girl!”
“That’s right,” Xander confirmed enthusiastically. “I saw her. She’s pretty much a hottie.”
“I heard someone was transferring here,” Willow added.
“So,” Xander insisted. “Tell.”
“Tell what?” Jesse asked. He was tall and gangly with short-cropped hair and thick brows. Definitely not one of the hot guys at Sunnydale.
“What’s the sitch?” Xander urged. “What do you know about her?”
Jesse shrugged matter-of-factly. “New girl.”
“Well,” Xander came back at him without missing a beat. “You’re certainly a font of nothing.”
* * *
Buffy sat in the principal’s office, across the desk from Mr. Flutie. He was middle-aged and overweight, slightly impressed with his own importance, she noted. As she watched him, he pulled her transcript from a folder, glanced through it, then turned a direct gaze on her.
“Buffy Summers,” he recited. “Sophomore, late of Hemery High in Los Angeles. Interesting record. Quite a career.”
Before Buffy could answer, he smiled and carefully tore her transcript into four pieces.
“Welcome to Sunnydale,” he announced. “A clean slate, Buffy, that’s what you get here. What’s past is past. We’re not interested in what it says on a piece of paper. Even if it says—” He broke off and looked down again at the ripped pages. His eyes went wide. “Whoa. At Sunnydale we nurture the whole student. The inner student.”
Having recovered himself, Mr. Flutie continued to talk while picking up the pieces of her transcript and arranging them back into their original shape.
“Other schools might look at the incredible decline in grade point average,” he went on. “We look at the struggling young woman with the incredible decline in grade point average. Other schools might look at the reports of gang fights—”
“Mr. Flutie—” Buffy interrupted.
“All the kids here are free to call me Bob—”
“Bob—”
“But they don’t.”
He pulled out a piece of tape and began taping the transcript together again.
“Mr. Flutie. I know my transcripts are a little . . . colorful—”
“Hey, we’re not caring about that! Do you think ‘colorful’ is the word? Not ‘dismal’? Just offhand, I’d go with ‘dismal.’ ”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
Mr. Flutie stared at her. “You burned down the gym.”
“I did. I really did.” Buffy winced. “But you gotta see the big picture. I mean the gym was full of vamp . . . uh, asbestos.”
“Buffy. Don’t worry. Any other school, they might say ‘Watch your step,’ or ‘We’ll be watching you,’ or ‘Get within a hundred yards of the gym with a book of matches and you’ll grow up in juvie hall,’ but that’s just not the way here. We want to service your needs and help you to respect our needs. And if your needs and our needs don’t mesh . . .”
Still smiling blandly, he slipped the messily mended transcript back into her folder and slammed it shut with his hand. Buffy jumped, her own forced smile going doubtful.
She felt depressed as she left Mr. Flutie’s office. As she paused there in the hallway, rummaging through her bag, a distracted student bumped into her, sending her stuff flying in all directions. Frustrated, Buffy knelt down and started scooping everything back up. For the second time that morning she failed to see Xander, who was standing close by and had witnessed the whole incident. Immediately he came over and knelt beside her.
“Can I have you,” Xander asked, then corrected himself. “Dyeh—can I help you?”
“Oh, thanks.”
He started picking up her things and handing them to her.
“I don’t know you, do I?”
“I’m new. I’m Buffy.”
“Xander. Is me. Hi.”
“Thanks.”
“Maybe I’ll see you around,” Xander suggested. “Maybe at school, since we both . . . go there.”
“Great. Nice to meet you.”
He gave her the rest of her books. She stuffed them into her bag and hurried away.
“ ‘We both go to school,’ ” Xander shook his head in disgust. “Very suave. Very not pathetic.”
Then he noticed something on the floor. Bending down to retrieve it, he automatically called after her, “Oh, hey, you forgot your—”
He broke off. He looked at the thing he was holding.
“Stake,” he said.
Buffy was too far away now to hear him.
With a puzzled frown, Xander stared at the wooden stake clutched in his hand.
CHAPTER 2
Buffy sat in the back of her history class, earnestly taking notes. The teacher’s voice droned on and on while she tried to keep up.
“It’s estimated that about twenty-five million people died in that one four-year span. But the fun part of the Black Plague is that it originated in Europe: How? As an early form of germ warfare. The plague was first found in Asia, and a Kipchak army actually catapulted plague-infested corpses into a Genoise trading post. Ingenious. If you look at the map on page sixty-three you can trace the spread of the disease . . .”
Everyone opened their books. Buffy didn’t have one yet, and as she looked around at the other kids, a girl in the desk next to hers leaned over. She was tall and very pretty in an exotic sort of way, obviously self-assured, and was wearing a killer outfit of tight pants and a mostly see-through shirt.
“Here,” the girl said. She moved her book so Buffy could share it.
“Thanks,” Buffy smiled.
“And this popular plague led to what social changes?” the teacher continued. Buffy thought class would never end. When the bell rang at last, the girl finally introduced herself.
“Hi, I’m Cordelia.”
“I’m Buffy.”
“If you’re looking for a textbook of your very own, there’s probably a few in the library.”
“Oh, great. Thanks. Where would that be?”
“I’ll show you.”
The girls walked out into the crowded hall and Cordelia glanced at Buffy with unconcealed interest.
“Y
ou transferred from Hemery, right? In L.A.?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh! I would kill to live in L.A. Being that close to that many shoes . . . Why’d you come here?”
“Because my mom moved, is the reason. I mean, we both moved. But my mom wanted to.”
“Well, you’ll be okay here,” Cordelia assured her. “If you hang with me and mine, you’ll be accepted in no time. Of course, we do have to test your coolness factor. You’re from L.A., so you can skip the written, but let’s see . . . Vamp nail polish.”
Buffy asked tentatively, “Over?”
“So over,” Cordelia replied. “James Spader.”
“He needs to call me.”
“Frappachinos?”
“Trendy but tasty.”
“John Tesh.”
“The Devil?”
Cordelia nodded. “Well, that was pretty much a gimme, but you passed.”
“Oh, good.” Buffy put a hand to her heart in mock relief.
They stopped at the water fountain, where Willow was taking her turn.
“Willow!” Cordelia raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow. “Nice dress. Good to know you’ve seen the softer side of Sears.”
Buffy saw the instant hurt on Willow’s face. She stared at Cordelia, surprised by the girl’s sudden viciousness.
Willow sounded almost apologetic. “Well, my mom picked it out.”
“No wonder you’re such a guy magnet.” Cordelia’s tone was withering. “Are you done?”
“Oh,” Willow said softly, instantly vacating the fountain. Cordelia stepped up to it and glanced at Buffy.
“You wanna fit in here, the first rule is, ‘Know your losers.’ Once you can identify them all by sight, they’re a lot easier to avoid.”
She bent down to drink. Buffy looked unhappily at the departing Willow, then followed Cordelia on to the library.
“And if you’re not too swamped with catching up, you should come out to the Bronze tonight,” Cordelia suggested.
“The who?”
“The Bronze. It’s the only club worth going to around here. They let anybody in, but it’s still the scene. It’s in the bad part of town.”
The Harvest Page 1