The Book of Fours

by Nancy Holder

  Willow blinked. “No, it’s okay. I’ll stay here with you. In case you want to talk.”

  Buffy gave her a look. “You were starting to doze off.”

  “Nuh-uh.” Willow blinked. “I’m wide-awake girl.”

  “Yes, you were. Your eyes were closing. I’ll be up in a little bit.” Buffy drank her tea. “I want to be alone. Do a little thinking.”

  Willow gave in, though her protective instincts clamored to stay by Buffy’s side. “Okay. See you upstairs.”

  “Don’t forget. You’ve got the bed. I’m on the air mattress,” Buffy reminded her.

  “And you’ve got Mr. Gordo,” Willow replied. She took her tea with her, rose uncertainly, and looked at Buffy as she left the kitchen. The Slayer’s eyes were unfocused. Her tea cup was cradled between her hands.

  She’s remembering a dear friend, Willow thought. Someone who was her best friend, once.

  Like I am now.

  She climbed the stairs, wishing Buffy would follow. But the Slayer had her own thinking to do, and Willow was very tired.

  * * *

  Angel stood in the shadows outside the Summers home and watched Buffy at the kitchen table. She was lost in grief, tears rolling down her cheeks. Yet the Slayer’s fists were clenched, ready to take down the enemy if it dared show its face.

  Silently Angel moved to the back door and stood, raising his hand to knock. When she saw him, he opened the door and crossed her threshold. After he had been cured, she had invited him back into her home.

  And her life.

  Buffy rose and moved to him. The tall, dark-haired vampire enfolded her in his arms, and Buffy wept soundlessly against his chest. His unbeating heart bled for her in this hour of darkness, no matter the reason. He was there for her, completely, no matter what she needed from him.

  “Buffy, what’s wrong?” he asked.

  “My best friend. Oh, Angel, she died.”

  He was confused. “But Willow’s here. I saw her go upstairs.”

  “Oh.” She grimaced apologetically. “Natalie used to be my best friend back in L.A. She and I were so close. Back then, anyway.”

  She grew wistful, wandering back to earlier days, happier days. “We used to do everything together. Shop, skip gym.”

  I wonder if she was on the school steps the day Whistler took me to see Buffy, Angel thought. One of those shallow young girls, obsessed with boys and makeup and being popular. The superficial kind of person I was when I was a living lad, back in Galway.

  Before I was turned.

  “Before I became the Slayer,” Buffy added. She laid her head back on his chest.

  She didn’t need to finish the sentence. In his own life, he had to leave so many people behind. He always thought he would get used to it, but he never had. He was glad his heart no longer worked. That way, it could never break.

  Her voice dropped. “There was so much I couldn’t tell her once Merrick and I started training. And the slayage.”

  “And then you had to move on.”

  Buffy looked up at him, anguish and hurt constricting her features. “No. She dumped me,” she said bluntly. “She told me that best friends never keep secrets from each other, and if I couldn’t tell her why I was acting so bizarre, then it meant I didn’t trust her.”

  Angel thought, Then she wasn’t a very good friend, much less a best friend. But he didn’t give voice to his thoughts. Buffy needed a shoulder, not a lecture.

  “Angel, why do people die?” she asked, clearly not expecting a reply.

  Why do they live? That was the question he wanted answered.

  No answer came; but sometimes he wondered if when he knew that, he would find peace. He had no idea why he lived; why he had been brought back from a hellish dimension and given back his soul. He wasn’t even sure if he had the right to look for an explanation. After everything he’d done, every crime and sin he’d committed, he had no right to ask for anything.

  Which was why he was so very, very grateful for the love Buffy freely gave him.

  So he kept his silence. Instead of trying to comfort her with empty platitudes, he rocked the Slayer in his arms. She was smeared with something that reeked of demon, as well as the warm, passionate scent of her own blood. Her heart was beating quickly, the rhythm speeding up the longer he held her in his arms. Her muscles were supple and pliant; her stomach contracted as she moved past her grief and into desire.

  For him.

  Her lips grazed his chest. Her arms began to hold him rather than to be held by him. He couldn’t help but be stirred; he would never forget their single night together. They could never have that again, but that knowledge did nothing to dampen his desire.

  Then he felt her stiffen in his embrace, and he was sorry for the tension that always existed between them now. They could never be one again, or he would lose his soul; they both knew that, and accepted it, and yet the yearning was always there, on both their parts. He knew Buffy loved him, and he knew she wanted him.

  “She was so young,” Buffy continued, her voice hoarse and strained. Her powerful fingers gripped the folds of his black duster.

  To me, you’re all so young. And you, most of all, Buffy Summers. If you live to be a hundred, you’ll die way too soon.

  Quietly he held her, not speaking. He didn’t know what he could say that could possibly make things better. Despite his many years, he had no profound wisdom about life and death that he could share with her.

  Buffy seemed to sense that. After a time, she sighed and broke their embrace.

  “My mom said something,” she said. “She was talking to me about how Irma still had Nat’s brother.” She looked up at him. “How does that make it better?”

  “Maybe she meant that Irma’s not alone,” Angel said. “She has someone to comfort her.”

  “Oh.” Buffy looked troubled. “I thought she meant that if you have more than one kid, you can somehow automatically transfer all your love to one of them if you lose the other.”

  “No.”

  She took that in. Sometimes he forgot that the world was still very new to her, despite all the killing and struggle.

  “You’re not alone, Angel,” she said suddenly, sounding very wise as she gazed into his eyes. “You have me.”

  “Yes,” he replied. “I know.”

  But it was, in many ways, a polite fiction between them. She could not be his; he knew that. And yet, in some ways, she would always be his.

  Perhaps because he would always be hers.

  Until my dying day.

  Chapter Five

  It was easier not to say anything.

  So when the guy Faith was dancing with decided to get fresh, she kneed him without a second glance and left the floor as he groaned and dropped to the floor.

  Her boot heels thumped on the sawdust-strewn floor as she walked to the scarred varnished table where he’d parked to buy her her fries, then asked her to dance. Legs wide apart, she stood in her tight black leather pants and the black sleeveless leather vest she had changed into, and finished off his beer. There was a bit of change on the table, couple quarters, a dime, a rash of pennies. She left it for the waitress, who deserved a lot more for working in a dump like this—and for needing to—and picked up his pack of cigs.

  “Hey, hey, that’s my last pack!” he half-shouted, half-pleaded, one arm flailing in her general direction.

  He was doubled over and it was pretty clear by the expressions on the other pool-playin’ beer-swillin’ guys in the bar that no one was going over to help him. Faith’s former groper was a young, cut biker, bandana and biker boots and a chain through his wallet, and no one else wanted to get near his bad self. His reputation had preceded him, north, south, east, and in the pool room, the minute he had walked through the door: Bad news, worse temper, great right hook.

  It had been a rush to dance with a guy like that, daring everybody else to shake their booty straight at danger like she was. Plus he was still good-looking, had all his teeth
, and some awesome tats.

  “Last pack?” She tsk-tsked. “Then I guess you’re quitting,” she called over her shoulder.

  The juke box was pounding out something fierce and sexy, the name of which escaped her. She sauntered toward the exit to a couple of hoots and appreciative grins from the guys the biker had terrorized during the night.

  Also the bouncer, stocky dude with a goatee, who gave her an appreciative once-over and said, “You want a job?”

  “Got one,” she shot back, grinning at him. “The pay sucks, but there’re some perks.”

  “Such as?” he drawled.

  “I work alone and I got no one to answer to.”

  Back on the dance floor, Fred Astaire was still moaning as she left the dive known to some as the Fish Tank and to others as the cheapest place in town to numb yourself out. You wouldn’t solve any problems at the ol’ Fish Tank, but you wouldn’t mind so much that you had them.

  The Fish Tank afforded every man, woman, and child with a fake I.D. a cheap drunk; maybe afterward, your old man would still be cheating or your kids would still be ravin’ on Ecstasy; maybe you still wouldn’t have a job or a best friend or anybody who would fall apart if you died.

  But you wouldn’t care.

  At least not as much as when you first walked in.

  Stomping outside, she was surprised to discover that quite a storm had worked itself up—same as me—and it was windy and rainy and cold. And her without a jacket or an umbrella.

  Who cares? I can take the elements. After all, I’m from New England.

  Faith crumpled up the pack of cigarettes and tossed them into a crusted-over oil barrel she guessed might want to be a trash can. A disheveled shape lumbered out of the shadows and dove its arm into the can, rummaging for whatever treasure the black-clad maiden had just relinquished.

  Peering through the rain, Faith hung a left into an alley that reeked of motor oil and tires. It was a short cut from the Tank to the main drag, which led to her home-not-so-sweet-home, the lovely Sunnydale Motel.

  All that room, you’d think Buffy and her mom would ask me to stay over, too, she thought. Not that I would want to. I’ve got better things to do than put up my hair in curlers and rag on about what sluts the cheerleaders are.

  She moved through the alley, taking her time despite the weather, keeping her eyes and ears open not because she was in a really bad part of the bad part of town, but because she was a Slayer, and that’s what Slayers do. Her earlier trip of the evening home to change had been uneventful, except for dodging the night manager. She was behind on her rent. No news there. Funny thing about being a Slayer; you got hazardous duty without the hazardous duty pay. As a matter of fact, you didn’t get paid at all.

  And the dental plan bites . . . .

  Ah, there it was, the pitter-patter of footsteps behind her. With any luck, some action.

  Faith didn’t break stride, but she listened hard.

  Probably about ten feet away, probably either two regular people or one four-legged thing.

  She grinned. She was all worked up from dancing with dangerboy and it would be nice to burn off all the calories from the two orders of fries with cheese she had cajoled him into buying.

  B. and Hopalong probably went to bed hungry, she thought derisively. Wouldn’t have the strength to kick ass if they needed to. And man, I need to. I’ve got so much adrenaline coursing through me—

  The footsteps halted. There was a pause. Then someone—or something—took the rhythm up on the rooftops of the ramshackle buildings on Faith’s right as the rains came a-tumblin’ down.

  The Slayer chuckled soundlessly and got ready to rumble.

  Then a shape leaped down at her, hurtling toward her as it uttered an ear-piercing, inhuman shriek. Faith’s reflexes went into high-gear, processing immediately that it was trying to scare her into going flat, as she had done during the Baffle attack. So she ran with it instead, facing it as it dove, fists out, thighs taut, and rammed into it with all her juice.

  It was a lizard-thing, about ten feet long, black-scaled with a massive, elongated head and a match-ing tail. Between the two ends was a back with ridged diamond-shaped plates finished off with quills. As she flung it backward, the quills released, shooting off in the opposite direction, that is to say, straight at her. She dodged them. The quills rat-a-tatted the aluminum siding and pierced a few rotten boards.

  Just then, something—a burning arrow, an explosive dart of the incendiary variety, a gout of flame—whizzed where she would have been if she’d hit the mud, missing her by a mile. But it caught her dive-bombing adversary in the back as it tumbled head over claws, igniting it. Its shrieks were painful to hear, but Faith ran toward it and gave it a cannonade of sharp, hard kicks just in case its spine hadn’t shattered into a dozen pieces of jagged, lizardy bone.

  Her assailants were two tall, über-skinny vampires wearing leather jackets, muscle shirts, and low-slung jeans. One of them carried the weapon that had just killed their pet velociraptor. They were fully vamped out, throwing out major ’tude vibes of “hey, we bad, um, until the sun comes out” as they moved to take her, one circling left, and the other one going for her right.

  She didn’t give Vampire #1 time to reload or re-energize or whatever. She put herself on turbo charge and just flew at him, no hesitation, no fear; Faith was the extremest of the extreme and that was aces with her.

  She ran into him so hard that #1 was flung back hard, smashing into some rusty aluminum siding with the greatest of ease. He lost his weapon as he went down for the count.

  Faith dove forward and caught the weapon on its way down. It looked like a combination of a crossbow and a rocket launcher, and her forefinger found the trigger like a match finds a can of gasoline.

  Whoomp! Vamp #1 went up like a torch.

  Vampire #2 growled as she whirled around and got him in her sights. He ducked down, then straightened, pulling something from his jacket. It was a very cool-looking battle-axe, and as he prepared to throw it at her, it began to glow with magickal green energy.

  “Wow, awesome,” she said admiringly.

  The vamp, however, cried out and let go of it. It clattered to the ground, zizzing and glowing. He dropped to one knee to retrieve it, but Faith beat him to the punch—so to speak—by diving through the air and sliding through to home, directly into him.

  He fell onto his skinny vamp butt while she picked the weapon up, gave it a look-see, and tapped the handle against the open palm of her left hand. The magickal energy coursed through her, making her tingle like some dorky preteen with a crush on Enrique Iglesias.

  It looked very demonic, the blade joined to the handle by a leering, bearded head of brass or gold. The single blade had a strange curve to it, like a butterfly wing, and the handle was crosshatched into a leathery, skin-like design.

  Giles will wet his pants when he sees this thing, she thought merrily.

  “Nice wood,” she said, grinning at him as he crab-scrabbled backward, then stumbled to his feet. He could go left, he could go right, but he stood still as if he knew she’d waste him the minute he moved. “Should dust you just great.”

  The lean mean chomp machine did not look too happy about that.

  “I’ll tell you who sent us,” he offered.

  “Okay,” Faith said, slapping the handle against her open palm. She wasn’t too thrilled to be holding a magickal axe that someone had just tried to throw at her, especially since it was giving her what amounted to a mild electrical shock, but hey, Slayer machismo and all that. “I’m listening.”

  “Tervokian,” he announced, like this would be a crushing blow to Faith’s morale.

  “Yeah?” Faith laughed heartily. “Good old Tervokian. South Boston’s answer to Michael Corleone.”

  In Tervokian’s dreams.

  And if the Corleones had been really ugly and very stupid demons.

  The vamp nodded and blinked his eyes, his gaze riveted on the axe.

  “What did
you do to rate this job?” she asked pleasantly. “Did you get caught trying to boost his Corolla?” She looked down at the axe. “So, what is this thing?”

  How could a vampire pale? But he did. “I don’t know.”

  “Uh-uh-uh,” Faith said, crinkling her eyes and wrinkling her nose. “No lying.”

  “I don’t know,” he insisted, shaking his head. “Tervokian told us to use it on you. That’s all I know. I swear it.”

  “You swear it?” She chuckled, amused. “On what, a stack of Necronomicons?” She cocked her head as she checked out her reflection in the blade of the axe. She didn’t look so great, but hey, streetlight and all. And at least she cast a reflection.

  “Why were you supposed to use it on me?”

  He looked puzzled. “To kill you.” As if in, Du-uh.

  That makes sense. He tried to do it before, in Boston.

  “That’s all you’ve got for me?”

  She advanced. He retreated slightly to the left since going backward was no longer an option—chain link—and they made a semicircle, so that he was moving in the direction of the body of the lizard thing. His good buddy Mr. Dustpile was of the past by then, blown away by the night breeze.

  The vampire glanced anxiously over his shoulder. “He said the axe would take you out. Guaranteed. We just had to cut you with it. Draw some blood.”

  “And so that’s why the James Bond weaponry?” she asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “Just to slow you down.” He held out his hands. “Hey, I’m not lying to you. I got no reason, now.” He tried to laugh but he couldn’t do it. “You know, dudes like me, we like to live same as the next guy.”

  “Bummer that you’re a stinking vampire, then,” she said, her voice growing cold. “In other words, already dead.”

  He looked very worried, which, given his situation, was the first intelligent thing he’d done. Spilling his guts—so to speak—had bought him nothing. Maybe there was honor among Klingons, but between Slayers and vampires? No freakin’ way.

  Maybe he was beginning to realize that when he said quickly, “Hey, come on. I’ve told you everything.”

  “Oh.” She raised her eyebrows. “Then I guess it’s time for you to die.”