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

by Christopher Golden (lit)

  They made him look dangerous, even monstrous.

  The biggest surprise for her was on the other side of the older woman, however. There sat an Asian girl with pink hair pulled back with barrettes. She could not have been more than fifteen. The girl met her gaze and some indefin­able connection was established between the two of them, a sort of primal recognition. Even if she had not felt that, she would have known why the girl was present. Why else would they have a girl that age at a gathering like this?

  The Slayer, Buffy thought. The one replacing August.

  It gave her a shock to see the girl, to remember the other recent Slayer, whom she had accidentally killed.

  And beside the new girl, the only other familiar face in the room. He had grown a neatly groomed beard and there was some gray at his temples now, but Buffy would have recognized him anywhere.

  "Wesley?" she said, surprised to find herself pleased by his presence.

  "Hello, Buffy," he replied, not without warmth. "Why don't you have a seat so we might begin?"

  The older woman at the head of the table cleared her throat. "Or, rather, conclude, as the case may be," she said as she gazed at Buffy. "Miss Summers, my name is Ellen Haversham, and I am the director of the Council's operations here in California. To my left," she said, mo­tioning toward the man with the pugilistic features, "is Christopher Lonergan, my chief of staff and tactician. To my right, Anna Kuei, the current Slayer."

  Buffy furrowed her brow deeply.

  "Oh, my apologies," Ms. Haversham said, almost amused with her slip. "I meant other than yourself, of course."

  Buffy wanted to punch her.

  "Of course you already know the present Watcher, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce, and our sorcerer, Miss Rosenberg."

  Willow looked up and smiled and Buffy felt a mo­ment of relief. Maybe things weren't as strained as she had thought after last night.

  "We have a great many questions for you, of course—"

  "You do, huh?" Buffy asked, a bit incredulous.

  "Buffy—" Willow warned.

  "'Cause, gotta say, I have a big batch of questions for you guys, too." Buffy shouldered through those gath­ered around the table until she reached the long win­dows on the other side of the room. She opened them all, and fresh air began to circulate.

  "A little stuffy in here, I thought," she explained, and glanced pointedly at Ms. Haversham.

  Then she walked over to the empty chair, ignored it, and perched on the edge of the table. Though there was a great deal she needed to talk about, she wasn't about to do it in front of all these people.

  "I've been in a cell for five years," Buffy said, her eyes on Ms. Haversham and no one else. "Not that I don't appreciate the assist last night, but I think maybe before you get to debrief me, I should at least be able to get answers to a few simple questions."

  Ms. Haversham's face took on a decidedly sour ex­pression. Then, to Buffy's surprise, the older woman fidgeted slightly, and then glanced down the table to Willow, as though seeking permission. It took Buffy a second to realize that everyone in the room was watch­ing Willow, and then she knew that the real power in the place did not sit at the head of the table.

  "What about it, Will?" Buffy prodded.

  Willow nodded, but she was not smiling. "Whatever makes you the most comfortable."

  "Fine," Buffy said. "Why didn't you tell me my mother was dead?"

  Out of the corner of her eye, Buffy saw Xander reach up to touch the scar on his face. She turned toward him but he only stared back at her, so Buffy returned her at­tention to Willow.

  "How did you know?" the witch asked, her expres­sion softening.

  "I had a dream."

  Willow nodded.

  "Why didn't you say anything?" Buffy asked, and in her own voice she could hear a plaintive tone that she did not like. It was an appeal not to the room but to the woman who had once been her best friend.

  For just a moment, Willow glanced away. Then she met Buffy's gaze and sat a bit straighter in her chair. "I didn't tell you," she said, voice steady, "because we were there and we didn't save her."

  Despite the strength in her voice, there was pain and sadness in Willow's eyes, in the set of her mouth. In that moment Buffy felt as though they were communicating not across the room but across the years they had been apart. Emotion charged the air between them; sorrow at what they had all been through. Yet there was something else there as well. Whether it was simply her own sense of guilt, her own mind at work, Buffy could not say, but she felt certain that in Willow's eyes she saw disap­pointment and a troubling question. Why weren't you here?

  "It was a long time ago, only four or five weeks after you were captured," Willow went on, "but it cost us a lot."

  Willow's gaze ticked toward Xander and then back to Buffy.

  "What's a lot?" Buffy asked, intuiting that the conver­sation was painful for her friends, but not able in that moment to let concern for their pain supplant her own. Somehow she had to fill the hollow place within her cre­ated by this confirmation of her mother's death, and yet she knew that was something she could never do.

  "Your mother," Willow replied. "The scar on Xander's face. And Anya. If it hadn't been for Oz, we'd all have died that day."

  Had a situation where it was either let the wolf out or die, Buffy thought, remembering Oz's words.

  "Anya..." Buffy said, almost to herself.

  She looked over at Xander. He met her gaze without wavering, no expression at all on his face. Whatever he had seen that day his girlfriend died, Buffy thought it had killed something in him, like deadening the nerves in his soul.

  "Who?" Buffy asked Willow, her voice cracking. "Who killed them?"

  "It was Spike," Xander answered from amid the crowded room. "Giles gave the order, but it was Spike who did it."

  Twice in the previous two days, Buffy had been close enough to Spike to kill him and had not been able to do so. A shudder went through her now and she clenched her right hand into a fist at her side. For a moment, all she could do was breathe. Then she stared at Willow again.

  It was as though everyone else in the room had disap­peared, and it was just the two of them, trying to make sense of what the world had become, what they had be­come.

  "Angel?" Buffy asked, dread filling her. "If he was alive he would have come after me, right? When did he die?"

  "We don't know that he did," Willow told her, her tone regretful but unwavering. "I called him the day you were captured. He came the same night, went out look­ing for you, and never came back. As far as we know, Giles never said anything about it to anyone, at least not in earshot of Faith, or any of our spies in Sunnydale."

  Buffy felt sick. Faith. Just another on a long list of people she cared about who had died because she wasn't there to save them. She had a thousand other questions but did not think she had the energy for them. Grieving, she at last slipped into the leather chair and leaned for­ward to gaze at Willow.

  "What is all this?" she asked. "The Council was never this militant."

  "We never had to be," the big man, Lonergan, in­toned.

  His voice destroyed the illusion that this was a conver­sation between old friends. Buffy wished it really were just the two of them, but she understood that was not how things were done with the Council. It never had been, re­ally, and now Willow was one of them, if not actually a member of the Council, at least working with them.

  Reluctantly, she turned her attention to Lonergan.

  "We never had to deal with an infestation like this be­fore," the man continued. "Leeches generally keep to themselves, but this group's different, yeah? More pow­erful, more organized, and Giles at the top of it all."

  "We've got the full cooperation of the U.S. govern­ment," Willow added. "The military influence is theirs. After Giles and the Kakchiquels started taking over Sunnydale, we found out that, hey, surprise, the govern­ment had been running a kind of monster research facility right there in Sunnydale. All roads lead to
the Hell-mouth."

  "You're kidding," Buffy said.

  Willow's dubious expression told her all she needed to know.

  "They had to pull the plug on their project when the Kakchiquels killed the entire staff on site. The people running that show couldn't get more funding. They were supposed to be primarily a research group, not a combat unit, which was what was needed. That's where the Council came in. I had contacted Quentin Travers when Angel didn't come back, but by then Wesley was here. The rest is sort of history. The federal government doesn't want the rest of America to know what's going on, so they've helped fund the Council operations. They've provided special forces training, weapons, and a jurisdictional freedom not even the DEA has, as long as we help them pretend there isn't a thirty-mile-square block of southern California en­slaved to vampires.

  "Of course, they could just go in some morning with a battalion of marines, but there's the matter of those pesky civilian casualties. They're hoping we can clean this up without it becoming any messier than it already is. They've given us two more months."

  Buffy blinked. She had not been expecting that last bit of information.

  "Then what?" she asked.

  Willow shrugged and glanced away sheepishly, a bit of her old self coming out. "I'm guessing napalm."

  "What about the people?" Buffy demanded.

  "Yeah," Willow agreed. "Time is running short now. We're going to have to go in sooner rather than later. If you learned anything while you were in enemy territory that could help us, well, that's why we hoped you'd be willing to answer some questions."

  "Anything," Buffy told her.

  The questions began. From Willow. From Ms. Haver­sham. From Wesley. From Lonergan. Buffy told them everything she could remember about her captivity and escape, and ignored the stares she received when she re­vealed the circumstances of August's death. She told them about her journey to Sunnydale, her conversation with Parker, the deaths of Harmony and Drusilla, and everything leading up to the moment when they arrived to help her at the border.

  Somewhere in the midst of all of that, Wesley asked her where she had gotten the crossbow.

  The crossbow. Buffy hesitated, glancing uncomfort­ably around the room.

  "On the way into Sunnydale I stopped at the old drive-in there, thinking there might be something I could use for a weapon. I broke up a chair for some stakes. In the projection room, upstairs in the concrete building there, someone had left me a crossbow."

  "You mean someone had left a crossbow behind," Wesley corrected, running his fingers through his beard.

  "No," Buffy said firmly. "Someone had left it for me. There was a note. 'For Buffy.' "

  Everyone in the room stared at her.

  Willow broke the silence. "Was it signed?"

  Buffy shook her head and then the debate began as to who might have been the one to leave the weapon there, who could have known Buffy would even stop there. It soon became clear that no one could have known such a thing.

  "Whoever it was must have been there with you, or right before you. Close enough to've seen you in the parking lot," Lonergan reasoned.

  "It was the middle of the day and I didn't see much cover," Buffy noted.

  "You never know," Willow told her. "You've seen their sunsuits for yourself. Not high fashion, but they can move around during the day if they're motivated enough."

  "But why would anyone do that?" Buffy asked. "Someone was watching me, no question about that. But if it was a vampire, why would they try to help me?"

  Willow stared at the table, brows knitted in contem­plation. No one else would meet Buffy's gaze. All of them seemed stumped. A low rumble of muttered con­versation filled the room. Then Buffy glanced at Wesley, and he was the only one not looking away.

  "What if it's Angel?" he asked.

  Several people began to talk at once, some to argue the question as ridiculous, others to support the possibil­ity. Buffy's mind was awhirl as she considered it. Could Angel be alive?

  Before she could respond, however, Lonergan swore loudly and shot to his feet, one hand clamped to his forehead. He bumped into Ms. Haversham's chair and nearly knocked her over.

  His nose had begun to bleed.

  "What?" Willow demanded. "Christopher, what is it?"

  Lonergan wiped the blood from his upper lip, his ex­pression grave.

  "We've got a vampire on the premises."

  Chapter 3

  Bloody hell!

  The bedspread was on fire. It was a delicate pastel floral pattern with black scorch marks, flames licking up from those charred spots. Of all the soddin' indigni­ties I've had dumped on my head today, Spike thought. Hell, of all the drawbacks to being a vampire in gen­eral, running about draped in flowery linens is the worst.

  The burning didn't send him into giggling fits, either.

  Spike whipped the spread off him and tossed it to the floor, then stamped furiously, almost petulantly on it to put the flames out. Gingerly, he felt his face and found that his eyelashes and eyebrows were little more than tightly curled ashes now. His skin was stiff and cracked and it felt as though if he moved too quickly it might split right open. He did not even want to touch his hair.

  He seethed with thoughts of vengeance. Nobody treated him like this, tossed him out some window to torch in the sun like so much garbage. The loss of Drusilla had left a void inside him, a cold, rotting place where despair and bitterness festered. But that void was not really empty anymore. Hate and rage had seeped into that place and now it was boiling over.

  Giles had vision. He had a dream. Spike usually ig­nored the big-talking vampires; silly gits usually had lots of swagger but little sense. Any tosser could wax poetic about a world crushed beneath the heel of vam­pire rule, human cattle, an endless feast of babies and virgins. Just a whiff of that sort of bluster usually sent Spike packing, chuckling all the way.

  But Giles, now. Rupert Giles had had a plan. Spike had plenty of plans of his own, mind, and the Big Bad was not about to sign on to play lapdog—or even fox­hound—to a vampire fresh out of the dirt. Thing was, this was Giles, and Spike and Drusilla had both believed he could pull off this grand scheme.

  And what a world that would have been.

  Now, though .. . now Spike was pissed. And his day was just getting worse and worse. Flowery linens just one example of the way the world had suddenly turned against him. How he was supposed to look fierce hiding his precious mug from the sun under embroidered car­nations and lilies... well, you just can't, is all.

  When Giles had thrown him out the window he had been burned badly. But even with the spread covering him, the time he had spent outside before breaking into the Council installation had been worse, trying to be all sneaky in a decorative spread that also happened to be on fire.

  Now, to top it all off, he had a sudden craving for a cigarette that he found cruelly ironic, but he had dropped his cigs somewhere along the way.

  Giles, he thought. Bloody bastard.

  In his left hand he held the key card he had taken from a guard on the grounds outside. He was tempted to toss it away but then reconsidered. It had gotten him into the building, and there was no way to tell if it would come in handy later. Spike slipped the plastic rectangle into his pocket as he surveyed his surroundings.

  A wide corridor, rear of the facility. The building seemed sterile and utilitarian, almost like a hospital. Once upon a time that might have been exactly what it was. Could do with a visit to the burn center right about now, he thought, with a smile that cracked his scorched skin and made him curse through gritted teeth.

  There were several doors with square glass windows in them along this corridor. He glanced into each room as he moved farther into the building and found mostly abandoned offices and several that seemed like they were still in use. He passed one room in which dozens of white boxes had been stacked floor to ceiling, but did not stop to see what was being stored. To his left, a stair­well led up. Spike figured he was le
ss likely to run into sentries upstairs, and that was probably where he would find personnel quarters.

  The Slayer's quarters.

  With every step, he winced at the pain in his slowly healing skin. By the time he reached the top, he was practically snarling. His desire for a cigarette had grown almost obsessive. He knew it was probably just his mind trying to think about anything except pain, but the pain was good in its way. It gave him something to focus on so he wouldn't think about the humiliation.

  Spike could take the pain just as well as he could hand it out. There had been plenty of times when pain had been a recreational sport for him and Dru. Pain was a friend, old and dear. Every time he winced and ground his teeth in agony, he could think about other times when he had been the giver. Those were sweet memo­ries.

  So Spike could take the pain.

  The humiliation, on the other hand... well, nobody made Spike look like a weakling and lived to boast of it.

  There were windows along the second floor corridor and so he hugged the walls to stay out of the sunlight. What he needed now was to find someone to torture in­formation out of. Shouldn't be too difficult, he thought. The place stank of humans.

  As though he had summoned them by the strength of his will alone, he heard voices beyond a pair of doors ahead that led into another part of the facility. For just a moment, Spike grinned, but it hurt too much.

  He threw open the doors.

  On the other side was a broad, diamond-shaped atrium where four corridors came together. Several sto­ries up was an enormous, many-paned skylight that spilled sunlight all the way down to the first floor. A balustrade ran all around the atrium, except straight in front of him, where stairs led up from the ground floor.