The Book of Fours

by Nancy Holder

  They had been patrolling for a whole week, and found nothing except for a few vampires here and there. If anything, Sunnydale was enjoying a relatively demon-free first semester of senior year.

  But then the little girl—Holly Johnson—went missing, and Buffy and Faith pumped up the volume.

  And tonight, we got lucky.

  So to speak.

  They’d both noticed that the fog was extra thick up around the lighthouse, and had gone to see what was what. They still didn’t have an answer, but Buffy had a feeling the what was what they’d been looking for—the thing that had invented new ways to slice and dice.

  * * *

  The something that was probably “the thing” smeared her back and she whirled around, slamming her fist into yet more gunk.

  “Faith? How you doing?” Buffy yelled again.

  “Five by five,” Faith shouted back. “Man, I’m gonna need a shower! With a fire hose!”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Buffy followed through with a good, solid uppercut, her left fist sliding in up to her wrist. With another backward kick, she caught her first assailant off-balance. It shrieked, the signal—which the Slayers had learned the hard way—that its tentacles were emerging. Buffy didn’t give it time to whip ’em good; she flung herself at the towering mass as hard as she could.

  It shrieked again. One tentacle shot free of the gooey outer layer; it sliced through the leather of Buffy’s brand new boot and tore into the flesh across her arch.

  “Hey! I just got these!” she protested.

  She leaped into the air and whip-kicked it with her other boot.

  Its answer was a sickening thud and then a loud splash. The creature had tumbled off the cliff, hit the rocks, and landed in the Pacific Ocean.

  Panting, she assumed her fighter’s stance, alert and ready for more. Her foot hurt like crazy. But she couldn’t afford the luxury of agony at the moment—which is so often the case in my life, both here and in math class. So many Scantron bubbles to fill in, so little time. There were more of these things lumbering around in the fog, and she knew from finding the bodies that their tentacles could disembowel a deer in seconds flat—never mind slicing off a human hand or ripping someone’s head off.

  She couldn’t see Faith, but lucky for them both, the two Slayers had spent the earlier part of the evening patrolling at the Sunnydale Mall, just to take a breather before another long, boring night of a stake here, a stake there, and nothing much to report back to the gang except the occasional discovery of the extremely disgusting remains of another victim of the Night Stalker.

  At the mall, Faith had sprayed herself with about two gallons of perfume at the Robinson’s-May fragrance counter because “they have to let you do it for free.” Now she left a wake of cloying fragrance so strong Buffy could almost see it, like Pepe LePew in a Warner Brothers cartoon.

  “Ah, woo! Got you, suckah!” Faith bellowed, as a shape flew past Buffy and back into the fog. There was another thud, another splash, and Buffy mentally painted another kill on the side of her own personal version of Snoopy’s World War I flying ace doghouse.

  Shades of some old ghost movie; musk and notes of floral came on very strong, like the earthbound spirit of someone’s dead grandma. Buffy triangulated with her Slayer radar to raise her hand at the precise moment to connect with Faith’s upraised hand as Faith smacked her palm in a victorious high-five.

  “Yo, we bad!” Faith chortled.

  “The baddest,” Buffy agreed, and sneezed. Faith’s perfume was giving her a headache.

  “Bottom of the ninth?” Faith asked, winding up for more killing. She was like Rocky on angel dust. “Or are we ready to leave early to avoid the traffic?”

  “Moving into overtime. There should be at least two more,” Buffy said. “I counted six when we won the coin toss.”

  “Knew you’d keep track of the yardage, B.”

  “Someone has to, F,” Buffy shot back, vaguely aware that the two of them were mixing up their sports metaphors. Then, sensing a presence to her right that did not smell at all expensive, she executed a full–on side kick.

  Contact. The Eagle has landed.

  Buffy set to work, slamming her fists in an alternating pattern as the thing grunted and began to make its signature whistle. Her hands were dripping with gunk.

  Also, I am eating no more tapioca pudding.

  “Look out!” Faith shouted suddenly.

  Razor-sharp tentacles burst free from beneath the layers of goo and whipped at Buffy as she jumped out of range. In a fresh attack, she concentrated on using the flats of her feet, which were the most protected part of her. The leather upper of her boot flapped back and forth, smacking against her arch; the wound stung pretty badly, and Buffy took a moment to wonder if part of what was flapping was layers of her flesh, like thinly sliced pieces of pastrami on rye.

  Oh, God, I am so grossing myself out.

  The fog rolled and eddied from the furious motion of the tentacles, and then the blanket of gray was parted and Buffy saw Faith ramming the thing with a thick limb from a nearby Bishop pine.

  The tower of gelatinous goo tumbled and rolled into a thicker section of fog. Shortly thereafter, there was another splash.

  Faith whooped. Buffy saw Faith’s big grin and heavily lined dark eyes hovering in the fog. She was beaming.

  “Some workout, huh?” Faith asked in her south-Boston accent. She executed a side kick, followed by a roundhouse kick, directly into the thickest part of the fog. There was impact. “Looks like tonight I’m concentrating on my quads.”

  “Well, I should be concentrating on my French,” Buffy said. “But hey, why freak my mom out with good grades at this point?”

  Faith laughed. Then, without a second’s warning, a tentacle shot past Buffy’s right temple and slashed Faith on the cheek. The sharp, green length sliced her to the bone and blood spewed down her face in a shocking cascade of crimson.

  “Faith!” Buffy cried.

  With a grunt, the dark-haired Slayer clapped her hand across the wound and flattened on the ground as Buffy flung herself into the fog, located the blubbery mass, and grabbed hold. Hurtling backward, she hefted the creature straight up and over her head. She heard Faith rolling out of the way, and the creature landed with a wet, slurpy fwap on the sandy ground just inches from the edge of the cliff.

  As Buffy sprang to her feet, Faith barreled into the monster and shoved. Buffy joined in. It was like pushing an enormous, multiarmed jelly roll. Its dozens of tentacles flailed for purchase, and then the thing disappeared over the edge.

  “Geronimoooo!” Buffy shouted after it.

  Thud. Splash.

  “We’re down to one,” Buffy said, “unless they’ve whipped up some reinforcements in their secret goop lab and beamed them down from Planet Nimboo.”

  Blood gushing from her cheek, Faith nodded, “And that last one’s mine, Captain Janeway.”

  “You sure?” Buffy asked, narrowing her eyes and wrinkling her nose as she observed Faith’s awesome blood loss.

  “Sure as I am that one of the SOBs broke the little bottle of Chanel Number Five in my jacket pocket.”

  “In your pocket?” Buffy echoed.

  “Yeah, what? You can’t smell it? I swear, I reek like a hooker.”

  “But I thought you said you didn’t have any money,” Buffy blurted.

  “Duh,” Faith retorted. She wriggled her fingers. “Five-finger discount, B. Try it sometime, when you aren’t rich. Like, never, in your case.”

  Before Buffy had a chance to respond, Faith disappeared into the fog. Buffy realized her arch was bleeding more heavily, and she pressed her palm over it to stanch the flow.

  Man, she shoplifted, Buffy thought, not loving that. I was right there and I didn’t see her do it.

  Meanwhile, Faith got down to business. Faith’s grunts came from her gut; her fists pummeling the last creature in a harsh, lightning-fast, jackhammer rhythm.

  Then the thing
flashed past Buffy, arced over the cliff, and smacked against the rocks jutting from the sea. This one screamed; then it whimpered, and then either death or the ocean overcame it, and all Buffy could hear was her own breathing and Faith’s semimaniacal laughing.

  She is one weird chick, Buffy thought. The degree of intensity Faith brought to her slaying was blistering compared to Buffy’s slam-bam get the job done, move on, go shopping. Shopping defined as actually paying for things. When Faith fought, it was all she did. She didn’t worry, she didn’t strategize, plan ahead—none of it. There was a sort of purity in her unvarnished lust for the kill.

  Faith staggered up to Buffy. The fog swirled and eddied with her movements, thinning into wispy membranes of moisture and light. Faith’s clinging black top was blacker still, and clinging more because it was wet with blood cascading down her chin. Her black leather pants were none the worse for wear—unlike Buffy’s boots—and she walked with the swagger that usually made goat-boy Xander’s eyes pop out.

  Buffy felt significantly more ordinary in a pair of dark gray pants, a maroon T-top, and a belted white vinyl jacket. And the ruined black boots, of course. Her hair was in a ponytail held in place by a black-and-gray scrunchy, and she wasn’t wearing much makeup. A trace of glimmer on the cheeks from the mall. That and some lip gloss were her Slayer glam for the evening.

  Good thing we haven’t run into Angel, she thought, even though it wasn’t, really. She’d been hoping to see him all evening. So far, no go.

  “We rock, girlfriend!” Faith cried. “Jeez, one minute you’re trying on lipstick and the next, we’ve got lip-smackin’ red blood all over our mouths.” As if to prove her point, she wiped some of the blood off of her face with the back of her hand. “Were those things wicked-ugly or what?”

  “Or what,” Buffy said, smiling faintly at Faith’s exuberance. Faith was the one who lived for the battle. Buffy just wanted to live.

  “Think there are any more?” Faith pressed the meat of her hand against her cheek. “Man, I hope I don’t get a scar. Or maybe it would look cool there. What do you think, B?”

  “I think we got them all,” Buffy said. “And as for the scar, I’m thinking you might need stitches. Me, too. One of them got my foot.”

  “So, trip to the emergency room?” Faith suggested. “The last med student who sewed us up was pretty sweet. Told me to be more careful when I was handling dangerous equipment.” Her chuckle was lusty and she made eyes at Buffy. “And speaking of dangerous equipment, maybe we could get your undead boytoy to thread us the catgut.”

  “Faith, Angel is not my ‘boytoy,’ ” Buffy said stiffly, limping along with as much dignity as limping would allow. “Or a med student. And he doesn’t own any catgut.” She hesitated. “I think.”

  “And I’m not sure he’s really gotten over me trying to kill him,” Faith added thoughtfully as she moved her shoulders and cracked her knuckles. “He might sew some of my stuff shut just for the hell of it.”

  The dark Slayer dabbed her face with her increasingly wet T-shirt. “You know what? I’m starving. If we go down to the E.R., we’ll have to sit in the waiting room for five or six hours. The caf will be closed and we’ll be forced to loiter around the vending machines. I am just not in the mood for candy bars and breath mints. Let’s just bag a stapler and go for fries afterward.”

  Faith lit up, which was a freaky sight with the blood all over her face. “With lots of bacon bits and gooey cheese on ’em.”

  Buffy made a face that she hoped was currently less terrifying than Faith’s. Sometimes when she got home, she was startled by the number of bruises and cuts she found on her body. Sure, rapid healing and all, but injuries still took their toll.

  “Fries with bacon bits and gooey cheese. I’d almost forgotten to cross them off my list of food I will never eat again, thanks to Baffle buddies.”

  “With jalapeño chilis, too,” Faith added, smirking. “You’re such a lightweight, B. You’d never survive in Boston. We eat weird crap stuffed into animal intestines and call it all kinds of fancy names. Like ‘sausage.’ ”

  “Faith, be realistic. You’re covered in blood, and my boot’s sticking to what remains of my foot. I’m not sure this is how I want to turn boys’ heads at the mall tonight.”

  “So we go shopping first, and get us some fashions that don’t scream ‘we’re so violent we belong on HBO.’ You’ve got the momstercard, right?”

  “For emergencies only,” Buffy drawled, then sighed as she squished along in her destroyed footwear. Brand new boots getting ruined by upside-down ice-cream-cone demons from hell constitutes an emergency, right?

  “Aw, shucks,” Faith riffed.

  She shrugged and kicked with her boot tip at a clump of ice plant stretched across her path. Buffy thought with sorrow of her snail homicide. The good news was that her foot still stung but the amount of blood gushing from it was slowing to the mere speed of whitewater rapids. Slayers truly did possess remarkable powers of healing.

  Which we need, seeing as how often those of the bad try to kill us.

  “Plus, mall’s probably closed by now,” Faith observed. “What about your house? Your mom’s got good credit and a fully stocked first-aid kit. And a fridge. And, hey!” She snapped her fingers. “Last time I looked, there were frozen fries in the side compartment and a block of Velveeta in the dairy section.”

  “Oh, my God!” At the mention of her house, Buffy made a face and slapped her forehead. “Willow!”

  “You totally forgot about your sleepover,” Faith said.

  Buffy was surprised Faith knew about that. She also wondered if Faith was hurt that she hadn’t invited her to spend the night with her and Will. In spite of the fact that the two Slayers spent so much time together, they didn’t do much actual socializing except at the Bronze, at least so far. Faith was still pretty new in town, and she had no friends, no money, and no car.

  Maybe she’ll steal one, Buffy thought uncomfortably. Or hot-wire an ATM.

  “About that,” Buffy began.

  “I never can stand to sleep at other people’s houses,” Faith said easily. “Waiting to use the john, worried you’re waking up too early. Trying to find the coffee. I’m glad I’ve got my own place.”

  If you call a depressing room in a run-down motel a place, Buffy thought. Still, she was relieved that Faith had basically opted out of being included.

  Will and I need some one-on-one time, she thought, and to be honest, I need some away-from-Faith time.

  She pretty much wears me out.

  “It’s only eleven. That leaves you gals all night to stay up and dish,” Faith continued. She shrugged and shook her head, smiling brightly at Buffy. “Don’t worry, girlfriend! We just took down half a dozen monsters, Buffy. You think Willow’s going to hold it against you that you’re late on account of that?”

  Buffy sighed. “I told her I’d be home early.”

  “So what’s she gonna do to you? Break up with you?” Faith snickered. “She’ll take one look at us and all will be forgiven and forgotten.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Buffy limped on down the path. The fog was thinning, revealing the picturesque details it had hidden from view: a couple of empty beer bottles on the left side of the trail, some cigarette butts, and a squashed Diet Coke can. On her right, the sand stretched, a dull, moonlight yellow that met the foamy scallop of the incoming tide; then jet black darkness extended into the night horizon.

  The moon hung low and weathered, like an old paper lantern, and the stars around it were the color of an old man’s hands. Four silver points close together hovered for a moment; Buffy assumed they were airplane lights.

  She watched them idly as Faith chattered about something funny that Xander had said, which reminded her of a boy she’d slept with, and Buffy listened with half her attention.

  The lights didn’t move. Then suddenly, one separated from the others, falling incredibly fast, and disappeared into the sea.

  “Whoa,” she blur
ted, interrupting Faith. “Did you see that?” She pointed to the sky.

  The quartet of stars was no longer there.

  “What?” Faith scanned the darkness.

  “Shooting stars, I guess. Four of them, only first they just hung there. I thought they were airplane lights. Then one of them burned out or something.” Buffy considered. “Gilesworthy, do you think?”

  “No clue. My Watcher saw portents, like, everywhere.” Faith was quiet for a moment, as if in respect for the dead.

  Then she slid Buffy a sly glance. “Speaking of joy, did you make a wish?” When Buffy frowned, puzzled, she elaborated, “You’re supposed to wish on a shooting star. I’m guessing with four, whatever you wish for you get quadrupled.” She chuckled. “If you can stand that much happiness.”

  “I wasn’t even thinking about Angel,” Buffy said, then realized she’d betrayed her thoughts. Faith snorted and Buffy sniffed, retreating back to her posture of her limping dignity.

  “Four, four, four boytoys in one,” Faith chimed.

  “Gross.”

  “Give it up, B. You’d love it.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Hey, girlfriend, don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.”

  “Oh, like you have,” Buffy said.

  Faith kept grinning.

  “Oh.” Buffy couldn’t help her shock.

  “Hey, you gotta share the love, B.”

  “That’s not love,” Buffy said, sounding stuffy, even to herself. But it wasn’t love.

  “No. It’s better,” Faith retorted. She burst into laughter and ran down the path, her arms spread wide like a kid. Like the kid she should still be. She sure works overtime to be Miss Trailer-park Trash. And I sure don’t understand why.

  “I’m the fastest! I’m the best!” Faith chortled.