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

by Christopher Golden (lit)

  Ms. Haversham had ordered that the nest in the Sun­nydale Museum was to be left untouched for the mo­ment, because the Council of Watchers could not abide the destruction of such valuable antiquities. When human control had been restored to the area, then the vampires in the museum would likely flee anyway. The older woman and her aides had established a command center at the Council building. From there they were in constant contact with the field units via headset commu­nications systems.

  One unit differed from the others, however, a small force whose mission was to proceed directly to City Hall. There they were to locate and destroy Rupert Giles, no matter the cost, eliminating any vampiric re­sistance they found along the way.

  Buffy rode in the back of a troop carrier, engine rum­bling loudly, rattling ominously. A castoff from the U.S. army, she suspected. But that was all right. They didn't need to go much farther. She glanced around her. Wil­low, Oz, Xander, and a dozen operatives handpicked by Ellen Haversham. Christopher Lonergan was in front, behind the wheel.

  Just before their departure, Wesley had created a stir, protesting loudly to Haversham and Willow that he and Anna, the younger Slayer, were not part of this primary unit. There had been a lot of talk about the practical and effective dissemination of their forces, but Buffy didn't buy it for a second and she doubted Wesley did either.

  The difference was that she suspected Wesley thought it was about him, that he was taking it personally. Buffy figured it had more to do with Haversham wanting to keep the Slayers separated to lessen the risk that they would both be killed today.

  Up front, Lonergan cursed loudly and jammed on the brakes. The truck shuddered to a halt and Buffy held her breath.

  "Abraxis demons. Four of them and a handful of hu­mans," Lonergan explained.

  Buffy glanced forward through the windshield and saw that they were in Dock town. A run-down tenement building ahead had been identified as a nest by Council spies. This was the moment when their smaller team was meant to break away from the phalanx, but there were yellow-skinned demons and some human collabo­rators in the way.

  "Go," Buffy said.

  Lonergan glanced at her in the rearview mirror. As a Council operative, he certainly had seniority in terms of years. But she was the Slayer, and the field leader of this mission.

  "Beta team can handle this resistance," she pointed out. "That's what they're trained for, right? They'll fire­bomb that nest inside of ten minutes and be moving on. Let's go."

  After only a moment's hesitation, Lonergan nodded. Gunfire erupted outside the truck and Buffy could hear the whoosh of flamethrowers as Lonergan accelerated, steering the groaning truck around the other vehicles and on toward the center of Sunnydale.

  On toward City Hall.

  The truck engine revved as they hit a straightaway. Out of the open back, she saw humans coming out of their homes and standing in the street to stare after the truck, and she wondered if they were relieved or terri­fied that help had finally come. If they even wanted help.

  As Buffy glanced around at the operatives in the truck, one of the guys caught her eye. Yancy, she thought his name was. He was staring at Buffy as though she were a riddle he just could not unravel. The others were lost in their own thoughts, in preparation for the fight to come, and did not seem to notice Yancy's preoccupation with her. Even when Buffy stared back at him, the operative did not turn away.

  "Can I help you with something?" she asked.

  Yancy flinched, as though he had been unaware that he was staring. "Sorry," he said uncomfortably. "I was just thinking. I understand that you're the Slayer, and all, but this seems a bit kamikaze to me. The place will be well-guarded. They won't simply let us drive right in."

  Buffy stared him down. "I think he will," she said. "Oh, he'll put up a fight, but I don't think he cares if we get in. That's the easy part. The way he talked to me the other night, I think he wants me to come."

  "He wants you to kill him?" Yancy asked, incredu­lous.

  "You're out of line, Yancy," Xander said curtly. "You don't have the first clue what the deal is here. It isn't your place to know. And it isn't your place to question. Buffy's got field command of this unit, and she knew what she was asking of us when she picked this team. You knew the risks when you agreed to be part of it. You want out, we'll stop the truck and you can walk back to base."

  They all stared at Xander. Everyone except for Yancy, who had dropped his eyes and shifted his gaze away. Buffy smiled softly, silently thanking him. For the first time since she had come into this harsh world, she felt like they were all together again. It wasn't like it was, and it never would be. But they were together.

  "I didn't mean anything by it," Yancy said.

  "It's all right," Buffy told him. "It's a lot to ask any­body, to go on this mission."

  "Trouble," Lonergan said abruptly. He gripped the wheel hard and hit the brakes.

  Buffy swayed as the truck shuddered to a stop. She looked out through the front again and saw that there was a roadblock ahead. There were humans with assault weapons, and at least five vampires in protective gear.

  "Fine," she said. "Trouble's just fine."

  Chapter 6

  The sun gleamed off the vehicles parked across the road, and off each fold in the silver protective suits the vampires wore. Buffy crouched between the seats of the truck and stared through the windshield at them. The vampires weren't her concern, not when they were only lightly armed and the sun was up. The humans, though, the traitors who worked for them, they were going to be a problem.

  "Buffy Summers!" a tall, bearded human shouted. "Come with us, right now, and everyone else in the truck gets to live. All we want is you."

  "I'm all flattered," Buffy muttered.

  There were nine humans that Buffy could count and at least six of them carried semiautomatic rifles. Assault weapons weren't something she was used to having to deal with. The forces of darkness tended to rely on more archaic weaponry, either out of a sense of style, an appreciation of antiques, or simply because they were too damn cocky to realize an Uzi was a more effective tool of destruction than a sword.

  Sword, Buffy thought with a tiny smile flickering upon her lips. She reached under the bench in the back of the truck, just under where she had been sitting. Wrapped in a green blanket was the ancient, rune-engraved sword Giles had left for her. She had brought it along, wondering about it a great deal. Wondering if he had left it to give her an edge, or really, truly, as a gift. Or if, perhaps, there was something about the sword that was meant to hurt her. Some enchantment or curse. Some sort of trap.

  Quickly, Buffy slipped a leather strap through the steel ring on the scabbard and then looped it over her shoulder, the sword lying across her back. Suddenly she was aware of eyes upon her. She glanced up to find everyone in the back of the truck staring at her. All of them, Willow, Xander, Oz, and the Council operatives, seemed coiled and ready to strike. The air crackled with the violence about to erupt, like the static electricity that hung in the sky just before a thunderstorm.

  Through Lonergan's partially open window Buffy could hear music, a heavy-thumping blues-rock tune that filled the vacuum created by the tension between these two opposing forces.

  The music was incongruous, and yet it wasn't.

  In some ways, it was just what Buffy wanted, a sort of affirmation of the beating of her heart, the blood rushing through her. She glanced at Willow. "What can you give me for a diversion?"

  As though their minds were cogs in the same ma­chine, Willow scrambled into the midst of the troops, there in the back of the truck. On one knee, she glanced around at them.

  "Buffy's going to walk right up to them," she told the others. "They will not attack her unless she draws the sword. They might try to make her disarm herself, but she won't."

  Willow paused, glanced at Buffy. "Don't."

  Buffy smiled. "Check."

  "All right, then. Here's what we'll do..."

  The music on the rad
io blaring from one of the cars in the roadblock had given way to screeching guitar from some seventies' rock band Buffy could not remember the name of. It ought to have seemed incongruous this early in the morning, less than an hour after sunup, but in light of the circumstances, there wasn't a lot that would have stood out as odd. As Buffy climbed out of the back of the truck, she could smell fire from some­where not too far off. A vampire nest, she knew. Burn­ing. The leeches dying, maybe wondering where Giles was when they needed him.

  No way, she thought. No way to make the world what it was. No way to ever make it right. What Giles and his lackeys had done to southern California was akin to tearing a wound in the flesh of America. No way was this going to heal clean. But if they could cleanse the wound, purify it, then it would heal.

  All that would be left behind were the scars.

  Buffy picked up her pace, walked a little faster as she went around the truck. A couple of the vampires swore when she appeared in their line of vision. One of them even took a few steps back. Before Giles took over, when this clan still answered to Camazotz, the demon-god kept the Slayer's existence a secret from them so that they would not be afraid. The Kakchiquels knew of her now, though. Giles had not taken that same precau­tion.

  That was good. Their fear gave her an edge.

  "Take the sword off and leave it on the pavement!" shouted the burly human who had called out before.

  The mouthpiece, Buffy thought. The others might be there just because they thought that it was the safest way, the way to survive. Working for the vampires. But this guy, he clearly was into it. He was a part of the dark, rotten thing that had spread its filthy tentacles all through this town.

  She kept walking.

  All of the assault rifles swung around, their barrels aimed directly at her. Two of the human collaborators who had not yet shown weapons now pulled pistols. She thought she recognized one of them as a cop she had met once in Sunnydale. The other, though. She recog­nized him right off the bat.

  Parker.

  "Drop it, now, or we bring you to him dead," Mouth­piece shouted, a bit of panic tinging his voice.

  If anything, her gait accelerated. Buffy strode toward them without the slightest hesitation. "I don't think so," she replied, close enough now that she barely needed to raise her voice. "He gave me this sword himself. It was a gift. I'm sure he wanted me to bring it when I came for a visit. And here I am."

  Buffy ignored Mouthpiece as he struggled to figure out what to say next. The humans seemed more and more jittery as she closed in. The vampires moved slowly to­ward her as she approached. They were faceless behind the hoods they wore, and Buffy could imagine that there were no bodies in those silver suits, just the darkness, just the evil demon parasites that lurked in every vampire.

  That's all they were, in the end, really. Corpse squat­ters. The image was gruesome, but it helped to think of Giles that way. No, not Giles. She wanted to stop herself from even thinking of the thing as Giles, but somehow she could not.

  Maybe a dozen feet from the roadblock, Buffy stopped. The human collaborators—in front of the cars, behind them, standing on the hoods—seemed to hold their breath. Buffy saw Parker's eyes darting over to­ward Mouthpiece and then back to the sword that hung at her side. The vampires—walking silver body bags— encircled her like a pack of coyotes, exuding quiet mal­ice, studying her, waiting for an opening.

  "The sword," Mouthpiece said again, but this time his tone was uncertain. "On the ground."

  Buffy smiled. With a small shrug of acceptance, she reached over her shoulder for the hilt of the weapon. The vampires twitched, drew back a step.

  The tips of Buffy's fingers touched the sword.

  The signal.

  Buffy closed her eyes.

  There was a burst of blinding light and searing heat that made her skin prickle. Screams of pain and alarm erupted all around her. Even with her eyes closed, she squinted harder against the brilliance of that light.

  And she moved.

  Etched upon her mind's eye, she could still see the vampires around her, the position each of them had stood in before Willow had cast this spell of illumina­tion. Even in the daylight it was blinding, bright enough to sear the eyes of the humans, and even momentarily to stun the vampires despite the shaded face masks of their sunsuits.

  With a sound like a bow across the strings of a violin, Buffy slid the sword from its scabbard. As it sliced the air she stepped forward and swung the blade. It con­nected, but was sharp enough that she felt only a small tug as one of the vampires was decapitated.

  The sound was not unlike hearing someone close by biting into a crisp apple.

  All around her, gunfire erupted. Buffy flinched, but only just barely. She had been prepared for it. Bullets tore the ground and she heard at least a few windows breaking around them. The human collaborators were firing, though they were all but blind in the glare of Wil­low's spell.

  With their backs to the glare and their eyes squinted, the Council operatives could see well enough, and they began to fire back with far greater accuracy than their enemies. Someone cried out in pain and surprise. Buffy opened her eyes even as she spun and brought the sword across the neck of a second vampire. She squinted, and could barely see through her slitted eyes, but her in­stincts guided her well enough to make use of the ad­vantage Willow had given them.

  In all her time as the Slayer, she doubted she had ever moved so fast. One of them lunged at her; she brought the sword down as though she were chopping wood. Another had turned to run away from her; she sliced at it from behind, the silver protective hood staying on the head as it bounced off the ground, just before the entire creature turned to a small whirlwind of dust.

  Only one remained. The vampire raised his weapon and fired two wild shots. She thought she could practi­cally feel one of the bullets go by her head like a hornet. The cut from her sword was so fast, so clean, that for a second the head of the vampire remained on top of his shoulders. Then both head and body tumbled to the ground and disintegrated into embers.

  Buffy slid the sword back into its scabbard. As she turned to face the collaborators, the Council operatives came up all around her. Willow and Oz and three others were on her left. Xander came up on her right with Yancy and a couple more. They seemed like little more than silhouettes in the bright glare of magickal light.

  One of the operatives, a good-looking blond guy named Devine, took a bullet to the shoulder and went down hard. But the bullet had to be a stray, Buffy knew. The collaborators were firing blind, blinking rapidly as they tried to get their vision back. One of them stumbled off the roof of a car.

  Backs still to the glare, the Council operatives rushed the roadblock and fired pistols, mostly to keep their en­emies off guard. The idea was to disarm them without killing them.

  Or it was, until Buffy saw a round red bullet hole ap­pear in the center of Mouthpiece's forehead. He stag­gered back two steps, then fell against the passenger door of the car behind him with a crump of metal. He didn't move again.

  "Hey!" Buffy snapped.

  Beside her, Willow's hands worked quickly in the air. Even as Buffy watched, the Uzi in the hands of one of the humans turned to ice and shattered. The guy turned to run.

  The power of the spell began to diminish and the bril­liant, glaring illumination to fade back to normal day­light, but by then Buffy and her comrades had reached the roadblock. Even as she lashed out and cracked the jaw of a man in front of her, she saw Xander attacking and disarming a couple of others.

  Willow had given them a vital advantage, allowing the confrontation to be dealt with quickly and without losing any of the members of their unit, but there was more to her than her skill as a sorceress. She was swift and graceful, a much better hand-to-hand fighter than she had been when they were younger, and she took the gun away from the man in front of her without him even really noticing he had lost it. To her left, Oz dove across the hood of a car and tackled a woman. But he was
just Oz, not the wolf. Buffy had been clear about that. She wasn't sure the wolf could be trusted not to kill.

  Someone had killed, though. Buffy glanced around, trying to figure out who it had been, and then she saw Yancy, a satisfied expression on his face. Before she could say anything, the human collaborators tried to grab her again. With a quick elbow, she cracked a nose, knocked someone unconscious. She spun around, and found Parker aiming a pistol at her from six feet away.

  "You shouldn't have come back," Parker told her.

  Hate and disgust filled Buffy then. He had always been a lowlife, but what he had become was worse.

  "You don't think I can take that from you?" she asked him.

  Parker smiled.

  Then, from amid the chaos of the roadblock, Yancy appeared almost right beside Parker, and shot him in the side of the head.

  "Yancy!" Buffy shouted as she watched Parker's corpse fall to the ground. "What the hell was that?"

  The collaborators who weren't unconscious or dead took off running. A pair of Council operatives helped Devine to stand and began to examine the bullet wound in his shoulder.

  Yancy holstered his weapon and the others began to crowd around, yet of all of them only Willow seemed even vaguely uncomfortable with what had happened.

  Yancy gazed at Buffy expectantly. "He could have killed you. If you're the key to this thing working, we can't afford that. Not that I expected slobbery kisses, but a simple thank-you wouldn't have hurt."

  Buffy glared at him. "You shot that other guy, too. The one who was doing their talking for them. Maybe you're just slow, but I meant what I said before. These are the people we're supposed to be trying to save. The only thing that matters here is that we get into City Hall, dust Giles, and, if we can manage it, get out alive."

  Yancy's eyes grew stormy and his nostrils flared with anger. "Yeah? I'm sorry, I was under the impression that the people we were trying to save were the ones who weren't trying to kill us."

  With that, he turned and marched back to the truck.