Buffy was backed up against a boarded window in the outer room as Lupa charged, dagger high. On the opposite side of the room, tongues of flame climbed up the wall, lapping at the ceiling and emitting thick black clouds of smoke. The house would be consumed by flames in minutes. They had to get out.
“Buffy!” Angel shouted.
Ghoul and Slayer went through the window in a tangle of limbs, plywood splitting and sailing away behind them. In the hard fall on the gravel driveway outside the house, Buffy lost her grip on the scimitar. She struck the ghoul twice with the back of her fist, shoved her away and rolled free of the debris. While Lupa was slow getting to her feet, Buffy was already up, trying to locate her scimitar in the darkness of the new-moon night.
“Give it up, Slayer,” Lupa said, stalking toward her with the long knife. She swiped at Buffy with the blade, but Buffy easily sidestepped it.
“Look around,” Buffy said. “Your ghoul pals are all dead. You would have been smart to leave my friends out of this. You really underestimated them. Then again, I don’t look for many signs of intelligence in the demonic ranks.”
Lupa roared, swinging the dagger back and forth, ever closer to Buffy’s chest. Buffy jumped back and back again, until she banged into the passenger door of Vyxn’s van. Lupa grinned and raised the dagger high over her head for a downward thrust. Buffy sidestepped at the last minute and heard the point of the blade screech against the metal door.
“It won’t matter how many friends you have after I eat your living heart,” Lupa shouted.
“Let me save you a trip to the orthodontist,” Buffy said and leapt into a kick that smashed Lupa’s mouth, shattering a couple rows of teeth.
Buffy ran toward the house, Lupa in hot pursuit, blood, teeth and spittle spilling from her battered mouth. The fire was blazing quite impressively now, casting enough light on the driveway for Buffy to spot the scimitar behind a clump of weeds. As Lupa hurled a section of plywood at her, Buffy somersaulted toward her weapon, clutching the hilt just as the board clipped her ankle, taking a layer or two of skin with it Buffy sprang to her feet, favoring her bruised ankle, scimitar in hand, but held backward, blade down. Acrid smoke billowed from the nearby front doorway, burning her nostrils and bringing tears to her eyes. As a result, she almost failed to see Lupa charging, dagger in hand, way too fast for Buffy to adjust her own grip. Instead, Buffy lashed out with a backhand blow, slamming the hilt of the scimitar into Lupa’s forehead.
The ghoul staggered backward, disoriented.
Buffy flipped the scimitar over, raised it in a two-handed grip, stepped forward and brought it straight down through Lupa’s skull. The curved blade lodged in the ghoul’s collarbone. Buffy stepped back, releasing the blade as Lupa’s lifeless body toppled over.
Angel leapt down from the window frame, then winced as he landed, pressing a hand to the wide circle of blood staining his white shirt.
“Our side okay?”
Angel nodded. “You?”
“Just glad I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve,” Buffy said, smiled and leaned against him, offering her support “Everyone get out?”
“They went out the back door.”
At that moment, Oz and Willow appeared from die side of the house. “Never doubted you were alive,” Oz said.
“And I knew you’d come rescue me,” Willow said.
They stopped in their tracks and exchanged the most fervent of smoochies. Buffy called out, “Willow. Oz Spectators present.”
For a moment they seemed not to notice, then Willow looked over at Buffy, a little flushed. “Oops,” she said, with a mischievous grin.
Giles appeared next, followed by Cordelia, who was gamely offering her shoulder as support for Xander as he attempted to hop on his good foot, his other shoe held in his free hand. He was doing more yelping than hopping. “Oh, stop your whining,” Cordelia said. “I have no idea what I ever saw in you.”
“Just a crazy little thing called temporary insanity,” Xander replied. “At least that’s my excuse.” He sat in the driveway long enough to tug his torn shoe on over his swollen foot, but left the laces undone. He glanced at Lupa’s corpse, lying in the driveway not too far from where he was seated. “Oh, yes! Ghouls do spoil fast,” Xander said to no one in particular, wrinkling his nose.
It was true. Buffy noticed the rank smell, like rancid meat, emanating from Lupa’s bloated body, which looked as if it had been pulled from a swamp after three long weeks of decay. Ready for composting, she thought.
Willow looked at Cordelia, standing by herself in the night, arms crossed for warmth. “Cordelia, about Troy . . .”
“I know,” Cordelia said, with a quick glance at Oz. “We stumbled upon what was left of him in the basement.”
“I’m sorry,” Willow said.
“Oh, well, I suppose there will be other screen tests in my future.”
“A humbling display of compassion, Cordy,” Xander said.
Cordelia looked at him archly. “What? That was two days ago. Haven’t I mourned enough? It’s not as if we were dating or anything. Besides, you really don’t expect me to risk frown lines at my age.”
“Of course not,” Xander said.
Giles walked up to Buffy, empty crossbow dangling at his side as he looked at the burning house. “All in all, I’d say this was an unexpectedly successful outcome.”
Xander said, “Is that your British librarian’s way of saying ‘all’s well that ends well’?”
Willow frowned. “I’m thinking of becoming a vegan.”
EPILOGUE
“Ask Buffy about her bad zones,” Willow said to Giles.
Buffy was beaming.
“Zones? Oh, yes, the source of your academic peril.” Giles worked a ruler down under his cast and moved it about until it elicited a sigh of relief. It couldn’t come off too soon for him. “From your delighted expression am I to assume they have improved?”
“You are. Commando—I mean, Counselor Burzak caught me in the hall this morning,” Buffy said. “The two yellows and the red are now two greens and a blinking yellow.”
“A blinking yellow, you say?”
“Oh, that’s a good thing,” Buffy explained. “Or at least a better thing. I think.”
“I’m sure it is,” Giles said loyally.
“I even saw Snyder walking around without his clipboard and evil charts,” Buffy added.
“Very good, then,” Giles said, obviously not wanting the entire explanation.
Xander said, “I’m still confused about this Solitaire guy. Not a vampire. Just a demon with a really big chip on his shoulder?”
“That is the essential gist of it,” Giles said. “He perpetuated a false identity, a complete history, as it were, to at turns frighten and confound his opponents.”
“Which reminds me,” Buffy said. “The next time the Watcher journals don’t seem to make much sense, there’s probably a good reason. I almost learned the hard way.”
“Yes,” Giles conceded. “It would appear that in this instance, Angel’s instincts about the Day Walker being a myth were well-founded.”
“And Solitaire was not working with the ghouls?”
“No,” Giles said. “What made you think he was?”
“You know what they say,” Xander said. “Demons are a ghoul’s best friend.”
“Groan,” Buffy said.
“Speaking of false histories,” Giles said. “Willow, what did you finally decide to do about your dilemma? The term paper on the history of Sunnydale?”
“It was tearing me up,” Willow said. “Whether to be honest and tell everything I know or to, basically, he about everything. So, I . . . Well, I . . .”
“What?”
Oz grinned mysteriously and said, “She took the high road.”
“The high road?” Giles said. “I’m not sure I follow.”
Willow reached into her binder and removed a thick term paper. “This is what I wrote,” she said and handed it to Giles.
With a wry smile, Willow withdrew another, much thinner paper from her binder and offered it to Giles.
He flipped through the pages, nodded and sighed. “Statistics, charts, population growth, industry and . . . and nothing supernatural.” He looked at her. “Much better, but how—”
Willow shrugged with an impish grin. “I had to edit for length.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Passarella lives in Swedesboro, New Jersey, with his wife and two sons. His coauthored debut novel, Wither, won the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel of 1999. Wither will soon be a feature film from Columbia Pictures.
Being an avid fan of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series, John decided the time had come to write his own Buffy novel after the San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle commented that Wither “hits the groove that makes TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer such a kick.”
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Ghoul Trouble, is his second novel. Be sure to visit John at www.passarella.com or e-mail him at [email protected].
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