Buffy The Vampire Slayer - The Lost Slayer - The King Of The Dead

by Christopher Golden (lit)

  "Mom?" Buffy asks. "Where are you?"

  The tired smile disappears. "Here, now, honey. Just here."

  "I need to see you," Buffy whispers. "I have to find you."

  Joyce Summers shakes her head, even as the current begins to take her, dragging her back and away, along the river and into the void.

  "Faith tried to save me. I thought you should know," Joyce says.

  Buffy's eyes widen. Her heart clenches painfully in her chest. She tries to swim the current, to go after her mother as the woman begins to diminish in the distance. But she is anchored now to Buffy at twenty-four, and cannot follow.

  Still, there is something she must know.

  "Who?" Buffy-at-nineteen screams after the dwin­dling figure of her mother. There are the ghosts of tears on her cheeks. "Who killed you ? "

  The tears were still wet on Buffy's cheeks when she woke. She had kicked off the covers and the sun shone through the window, casting a distorted square of warmth and light across her legs. It was too warm and she pulled her legs up in front of her, curled into an al­most fetal position there on the bed. The sun felt wrong to her. Too good; too healthy; too rich with heat and life. It was as though the sun itself were unnatural, merely a hesitation between stretches of night, a gasp of bright­ness and false security before the dark came again.

  That was what Giles had done.

  Giles, Buffy thought. It was a joke cast down by the cruelest of gods, that her former mentor and friend should become this thing, should be transformed into the most vile example of the monsters he had fought his entire life.

  In her mind's eye, Buffy could see a clear image of Giles, a kind, decent man who had been more of a father to her in her teenage years than her own father had been.

  Oh, Giles, she thought again.

  Through some dark and powerful magick, a being called The Prophet had thrust Buffy's soul five years into the future, so that she now existed inside her own twenty-four-year-old body. Twin spirits, one younger, one older, thrived within her and though their memories and thoughts were sometimes in conflict, for the most part they had merged. Buffy had reason to believe it was a temporary situation, but she resigned herself to grow­ing accustomed to it, just in case.

  In this dark future, Buffy had spent the previous five years imprisoned by the vampires, and had escaped to find that her best friend, Willow Rosenberg, had grown wiser and more powerful and was now a major player in the war against the darkness. Willow had told Buffy how it had all come to this, or at least as much as they could guess. The god of bats, Camazotz, had come to Sunnydale followed by his Kakchiquels, a breed of vampires somehow enhanced by his own demonic power. Striking out at the Slayer, Camazotz had ordered Giles made a vampire.

  It was the greatest mistake the god of bats had ever made. Giles was brilliant and cunning, with an encyclo­pedic knowledge of demonology and a violent, dark streak he was at pains to keep hidden. Once the vampiric spirit had taken up residence in the dead man's psyche, adopting as vampires usually did the knowledge and personality traits of the victim, Camazotz had created his worst enemy. Giles established himself as king of the vampires.

  What happened to Camazotz, no one really knew. But the Kakchiquels, old and new alike, still seemed to shimmer with the power of the god of bats, and so Wil­low and the others presumed the Mayan deity was still alive.

  Yes, Willow had told Buffy all of that, and more, and it had broken the Slayer's heart. But there were a great many things Willow had not told her. She had not, for instance, said anything about the murder of Buffy's mother. Had talked around it, in fact, changing the sub­ject at least twice to avoid it.

  Only through her dream had Buffy learned the truth.

  The dream, she thought now. The line of the Slayer's power stretching into the future and back into the past. A thousand questions filled her head, but she pushed them all away. They could wait until later. Wait until she had spoken to Willow.

  The night before she had been rescued by an extrac­tion team led by the girl who had once been her best friend—the young witch nineteen-year-old Buffy still thought of as her best friend. Xander and Oz had been with the group as well. All of them had been different, changed by time. Hardened. Yet after an awkward first few moments, Willow had softened. Buffy thought that she had seen within this powerful witch the girl she knew so well. It felt as though they had reconnected.

  But now Buffy was not certain. Her mother was dead and she felt sure that Willow had known it.

  All of these thoughts weighed heavily upon her as she rose from bed. The small room she had been given had a full bathroom and though she had showered before falling asleep the night before, she did so again now. The water was hot and the steam swirled in the room. She breathed the warm air in, and it felt as though she were scouring not only her body but her lungs as well.

  In the closet Buffy found some clothes that had been left for her the previous night. Nothing was her size, but that was not a surprise. It was not as though they had had much time to prepare for her arrival. She managed to find jeans, a tee shirt and a hooded navy blue sweatshirt that fit her. In the stale-smelling room, she bounced on her toes and spent a few minutes doing stretching exercises.

  Somehow, she had to find a way to explain to Willow what had happened that night five years ago, to make her understand how two versions of the same mind, two moments of the same soul, could exist in one body. With Willow's help, Buffy had to find a way to separate her twenty-four-year-old body from the nineteen-year-old soul inside her, find a way to return her younger self to its rightful place.

  It would happen eventually, Buffy knew that. It was already history. But she did not know how to make it happen, or even how long her younger persona was meant to stay in this hideous future.

  With a leap, she balanced on the metal frame of the bed, crouched with her arms out. Then she executed a perfect backward somersault, and swept through a se­ries of shadow-boxing jabs and kicks that shook her loose, got her blood flowing.

  Somehow she would figure out how to get her split soul back to where it belonged. But for the moment, there were things that had to be attended to right here.

  Five years earlier she had taken on too much, tried to force herself to live two lives at one hundred percent each. Ironic, given her current predicament. But she was only one person. Buffy Summers was the Slayer, and her life had to be broken up accordingly. That meant that she had to have help sometimes. That night, years ago, she had tried to do it all herself. Her insistence upon that had probably led to Giles's initial capture, and her efforts to free him had led to everything else.

  If she had been more practical, more honest with her­self, from the beginning, this future would never have come to pass.

  Now that it had, however, she was not going to rest until she set things right. She had to find the lord of vampires, Rupert Giles.

  And dust him.

  Buffy took a last glance around the small room they had given to her, and smiled softly. Whatever her resent­ments, whatever her fears, this tiny room was a vast im­provement over the much larger cell she had spent the past five years in. The window alone, with the sun shin­ing through, made all the difference. More than that, however, was the simple fact that she could open the door and walk out.

  Curious and almost trembling with momentum, with the desire to take action, Buffy went out into the corridor. Whatever this installation was where the Council had set up its task force—if that was what they were—it was cold and featureless, almost military. The floors were covered in gray industrial carpet, the walls painted a sort of jaundiced white that made Buffy think of old bones.

  On impulse, she started off to the left. She passed an open door and saw a thirtyish guy doing pull-ups on a bar inside the room. When he spotted her walking past, he lost his focus and let go of the bar. He watched her, but Buffy glanced away. Several others passed her as she wandered, all of them in drab gray paramilitary uni­forms or neatly pressed busines
s suits.

  At a junction in the corridor, she caught the scent of food off to her right. The cafeteria, she assumed, and so headed in that direction. Her stomach rumbled loudly as the thought of food drew her on.

  As she approached the open double doors of the cafe­teria, however, a small door opened on her left and a fa­miliar figure emerged. Oz wore droopy denim pants and a green cotton V-neck shirt that hung loose on him. It occurred to Buffy that they both looked like they were wearing someone else's clothes.

  In the moment before he saw her, Buffy studied Oz's face. His hair was longer than it had once been, swept back from his forehead in shaggy waves, and there was a reddish stubble on his chin. Though as always his ex­pression revealed nothing of his inner emotions, there was a melancholy in his eyes that gave her pause.

  Oz sniffed the air, then glanced up at her sharply.

  "Buffy," he said, as if it were hello.

  "Oz," she replied.

  They shifted uncomfortably for a moment there in the hall, half a dozen feet from each other. Buffy broke the silence.

  "I was just wandering around. Trying to orient my­self."

  Oz nodded once. "You want the ten-cent tour?"

  "I'd like that."

  For twenty minutes they walked the halls of the in­stallation together. Though his narration on the tour con­sisted mostly of things like "library" and "training area," Buffy enjoyed his company. She sensed no guile in Oz at all. But there was more to it than that. As they walked down a long flight of stairs she thought would eventu­ally lead them back to the corridor where they had met up, she paused and turned to him.

  Oz arched an eyebrow.

  "You trust me," she said, and it wasn't a question.

  "Yeah?"

  "Why?"

  Though his features were fully human there was something of the wolf in the way he cocked his head just then. "Some reason I shouldn't?"

  Buffy sighed. "No. It's just, last night I felt this kind of static from Xander and even from Willow. It's been a long time, I know. But this seems like more than that. Not that I'm expecting everything to be the way it was—"

  "Nothing is," Oz interrupted.

  "I know. I understand that," Buffy insisted. "Just feel­ing a little like the wicked stepsister here. I don't know if it's resentment or what, but it's like they don't want me here."

  "Willow led the extraction team," Oz reminded her.

  Buffy nodded, smiled awkwardly. "Yeah. Yeah, she did. Maybe I'm just wigged because it's been so long since I've seen you all. Since I've seen anyone who still had a pulse."

  "Maybe," Oz replied. "Maybe not. Life went on, Buffy. Willow always believed you'd come back, but in the meantime, we've got this war. Whole big machine pretty much running on its own. My guess? It's gonna take some time to figure out where you fit into it."

  Buffy understood immediately what he meant, for she had been feeling almost exactly the same things. She had to figure out what her role was supposed to be now, and so did Willow and the others on the Council. Awk­wardness was inevitable. She just had to have the pa­tience to ride it out.

  Oz turned and started down the stairs again. Buffy followed him quickly and grabbed his shoulder, still in­tent upon speaking to him. When Oz snapped around to glare at her, there was a snarl on his face, his lips pulled back to expose his teeth. Buffy flinched and drew her hand back, and Oz's expression softened im­mediately.

  "Sorry," she said.

  "It's all right. I don't like to be touched. You didn't know."

  And there it was, exactly the sort of thing that she had been thinking about seconds before. The way things were right now, she didn't fit in. She only hoped that would change.

  "I guess there's a lot I don't know," Buffy replied. "How... how did you get control of your wolf side?"

  Oz's nostrils flared. He scratched the back of his neck idly, as if she had not asked the question at all. At length he glanced at her again.

  "Had a situation where it was either let the wolf out or die. So I let it out. Been working on it since."

  "And it wasn't the full moon," Buffy pressed.

  "No moon at all. Breakfast time, actually. Never did get to finish that cinnamon roll." The corners of Oz's mouth twitched briefly, as close to a smile as anyone was likely to get from him. "You want to know why I trust you?"

  Slowly, Buffy nodded.

  "We've all changed. Maybe on the face of it, so have you. But there's something in you that's just the same, like a flashback to when things weren't quite so nasty. I've got to get going. We all have responsibilities here."

  Oz started down the steps away from her again. Buffy could only watch him go, turning his words over in her head.

  "Welcome back to your war," he said as he reached the bottom of the steps and began to walk off.

  "Wait, Oz," she called after him.

  A pair of older men in suits hurried by as Buffy went down the stairs after him. They barely spared her a glance.

  "Why is it my war? Why not yours, too?"

  "I only stay for Willow. Not sure she notices, though."

  Then Buffy understood the sadness in his eyes. What­ever was between him and Willow now, it was not what it once had been.

  "Well, what about Willow?" she asked. "Why does she stay?"

  Expressionless, Oz studied her for a moment. Then he inclined his head, just slightly. "She stays for you."

  The cafeteria reminded her an awful lot of high school. She passed over some of the less identifiable foods and opted for a chicken Parmesan sandwich. It was not quite cold and the cheese had all but congealed on the top, but as hungry as she was, Buffy barely noticed. There were French fries as well, and those, at least, were hot.

  When she turned to glance about for a place to sit, Buffy became extremely self-conscious. She caught several people staring at her, but most of them looked away the instant she noticed them. A pair of young, lean guys watched her for a few moments too long, then turned to each other and began to whisper.

  Suddenly she was back at Sunnydale High again. The new girl, with a reputation that had preceded her. Rumor has it she was booted out of her old high school in L.A. for burning down the gymnasium. What a freak.

  Buffy shook those feelings off. High school had been a long time ago, and after the years she had been with­out any human contact at all, even curious stares and rude whispers were better than isolation. Though she was tempted to take a seat with one of the scattered groups in the caf, she had too many questions in her head, too much on her mind to simply socialize.

  In the middle of the room, she found a small round table that was empty, and sat down alone. A short time later, while she was peeling an orange she hoped would get the greasy taste of the chicken out of her mouth, Xander came into the cafeteria. Relief washed through her. She was pleased to see someone she knew, someone who was a friend, despite the grim demeanor that now seemed almost constant for him.

  Though she had seen him clearly enough last night, she was not at all used to his appearance. At twenty-four, Xander barely resembled the boy she had first met back in sophomore year of high school. All the light­ness, the sense of jest, had gone from his eyes. He had often worn his hair too long and unruly. Now it was shorn only a few inches off the scalp, which only served to exacerbate the severe cast to his features that was punctuated by the crescent-shaped scar on his face.

  He spotted her and strode over, his gait hurried and stiff.

  Xander did not sit. It pained her, that little detail. The visible changes in him seemed confirmed by this. Yet with Xander she did not take it personally. Whatever experiences had caused his personality to be altered so dramatically, this behavior was not aimed at her. This was simply who Xander was now. Once upon a time, he would have sauntered into the room and dropped himself like a particularly agreeable rag doll into the chair.

  No longer.

  "Willow asked me to tell you there's a debriefing in five minutes if you want to attend."

>   So many things she wanted to say to him, to ask him, but Xander seemed like a wall to her, and all Buffy could do was nod. "Where?"

  "I'll take you," Xander replied.

  When Buffy did not rise to follow him, at last he re­luctantly sat down across from her. The last of the peel came off the orange and Buffy tore the fruit in two. She handed half across to him. For a moment Xander only stared at the sticky, dripping orange as if it were some foreign object. Then he took it from her.

  "Thanks," he said, as he popped a piece into his mouth.

  "It speaks," Buffy said, almost afraid to tease him but more afraid of not trying to break the ice between them.

  To her great relief, he smiled. For just a moment, she saw the old Xander in there.

  "I missed you, Xand," Buffy told him, though after all the time she had spent alone the words were hard for her. "I missed all of you."

  He swallowed hard and put the rest of his orange down on the table, uneaten. Xander rose and faced her.

  "We should go."

  "God, what happened to you?" Buffy asked him, frustrated.

  He hesitated, then shook his head. "Another time, Buffy."

  When Xander led her into the conference room, Buffy was at first startled by how many people were crammed inside. Though the room had clearly been in­tended for smaller numbers, there were at least twenty people standing around a long wooden table. Nine oth­ers were seated around the table, at the far end of which there was one vacant seat. Buffy glanced back at Xander curiously, but he only nodded for her to proceed. He would not be sitting, apparently.

  Which made her wonder exactly how one earned the privilege of a chair. Willow was seated at the table, dressed in a brown suit that was quite flattering on her. It made her look even older than she was and reminded Buffy that this was not the teenager who had been her best friend. A buzz of conversation filled the room as Buffy looked around at the others at the table. At the end, opposite the empty chair that had been left for her, sat a sixtyish woman with her hair in a tight bun and her hands folded primly on the table in front of her. Her eyes had a ferocity in them that was anything but prim. To her left was a large man in paramilitary garb whose nose had clearly been broken several times. It was flat­tened and skewed to one side. He had the look of an old-time boxer, but beyond that his most prominent feature was that his hands were enormous. Buffy did not think she had ever seen a human with such large hands.