* * *
Curious about how the marks might have been made, Buffy experimented by dragging her left foot. The resulting imprint in the dust looked the same as the shallow marks she had been following through the tunnel. Also, since none of the impressions had been disturbed by an overlying footprint, they were fresh.
“So I’m either tracking a hopping slug demon, or Anya managed to leave a trail.” Buffy glanced back down the tunnel, wishing she had investigated the mark at Justine’s entry point into the underground network. If the depressions in the dust began there, she’d know for sure, but she couldn’t spare the time to go back. Having no other options, she picked up the pace and followed the marks—until they suddenly vanished.
Buffy stopped short and backed up slowly. The line of markers ended at a slightly elevated spot in the floor. The smooth stone surface was dust and footprint free and formed a ledge outside a narrow break in the rock wall. No light filtered through the crack, but she didn’t have another lead and time was getting critical. She had never had a Tarot reading done, but it couldn’t take too long.
Feeling her way with her hands, Buffy crept through the narrow passage in the dark for several feet. Her eyes soon adjusted to a dim glow cast by shiny stuff growing on the rock. She paused when she heard a muted human voice coming from a dimly lit opening, then silently eased forward.
The cavern was huge and lit by several battery-powered camp lights. Buffy scanned the scene in an instant, taking in every detail. All the paintings but one were leaning against the far wall. The last image was on an easel by the card table in the center of the natural cathedral. Anya and Justine were seated opposite each other on folding chairs.
Anya was staring into space, zapped into mindless limbo like Xander, Willow, and Oz.
Justine was talking and dealing the Tarot cards.
No! Buffy’s mind lurched. It can’t be too late! She couldn’t remember what Giles had said about the mental transfer process that would empower the last painting. Was it too late once the Tarot reading had begun or not until after it was finished? Whatever. The world and everything in it was destined for oblivion if Justine finished the deck.
Justine’s face registered surprise when she turned and saw Buffy charging toward her, then fear.
Major clue there, Buffy thought. The artist wouldn’t be afraid if she was already invincible.
Turning back to Anya, Justine quickly pulled a card off the deck with a trembling hand.
A wave of hope spurred Buffy forward with a burst of lightning speed. Her hand slammed down over Justine’s as the artist placed the card on the table.
A shock jolted Buffy’s brain and the world began to slow down.
CHAPTER 14
Angel pressed against hard rock, his head thrown back, sweat running in rivulets along his clenched jaw.
He had been systematically combing the underground for Justine since Buffy had left that morning. The search area had narrowed when he had entered the old, secondary network under the downtown streets. The tunnels had been cleared of all the supernatural creatures that lurked and hunted within them, all of them driven away by the evil surrounding the artist.
Justine was protected from the denizens of the dark by Kali, and the effect was enhanced by her proximity to the Hellmouth.
It had taken every shred of Angel’s will to resist the overwhelming urge to flee. He would not have been able to fight the powerful force at all except that he had a soul.
“Oz! Stop!”
Giles. Angel’s head snapped toward the sound of the librarian’s voice. If Giles and Oz were down here, then Buffy probably was, too. He reached out with his senses to probe the labyrinth beyond the four humans in the tunnel to the more potent essence of the Slayer.
The trace was faint, masked by the revolting evil that filled the passageway Buffy traveled.
Steeling himself, Angel pushed off the wall and plunged deeper into the realm of Kali’s influence.
He found Giles stumbling through the tunnel dragging Xander between himself and Oz.
“Need some help?” Angel asked.
“Angel?” Startled, Giles lost his grip and Xander’s limp body collapsed on the ground in a twisted heap. “Yes, please. Buffy came down ahead of us, but I don’t know where she is exactly.”
“I do.” Fighting the debilitating effects of Kali’s protective ward, Angel lifted Xander and threw him over his shoulder.
Oz was still clutching Xander’s arm and Angel’s sweeping movement yanked him off his feet.
“Oz. Let go.” Giles exhaled with exasperation when Oz released his grip.
Angel glanced from Willow to Oz. They were obviously victims of the same coma condition as Xander, which Buffy had described to him last night. And fading fast, he realized.
“Willow, Oz . . . run.” Giles sprinted down the dark corridor after the pair, calling back over his shoulder. “We have to hurry, Angel.”
“No argument there.” Angel shifted Xander’s weight on his shoulder and forced his legs to move against a tide of undiluted malevolence intent on stopping him.
* * *
Buffy stared. Justine’s hand was trapped between hers and the Tarot card the artist had just drawn. The tips of Buffy’s fingers barely touched it.
The high pitch of Justine’s alarmed cry slid into a lower register and faded out. “Noooooooo . . .”
“Where am I?” Anya snapped. “What’s going on?”
Buffy swayed with dizziness as the cavern shimmered.
“Bu-fffffy!”
Angel? Buffy’s head felt like it was anchored by lead weights as she turned toward the entrance. Angel dropped Xander and moved into the cavern in slow motion with Giles gliding on his heels. Willow and Oz sank to the stone floor. Anya ran to Xander with slowed, leaping strides that belied her urgency.
Then the cavern vanished in the gray fog that flooded Buffy’s mind.
* * *
“Xander!” Anya raced past Giles and Angel without giving them a glance.
Focused on the Slayer, Giles stopped just short of running into her. His heart sank as he looked into her empty eyes. What on earth had happened?
Oz plowed into him from behind.
“Stop!” Startled, Giles yelled. “Back five paces and—halt.”
Angel had fallen to his knees at the halfway point. The vampire clutched his head in agony, his facial features a distorted mixture of human and demon. Unfortunate and curious, Giles thought, but Buffy’s affliction is more important.
Straightening his glasses, Giles studied Buffy and Justine. Both were frozen in a macabre version of Statues, the children’s game, while Anya had been freed from the trance state that gripped Xander, Willow, and Oz. Justine had, apparently, just dealt the last card in a simple spread. Anya’s Tarot reading had not yet been completed when Buffy clamped down on the artist’s hand.
Giles leaned over to get a closer look at Buffy’s hand. Her fingers were touching the card drawn from Hovan’s deck. There was only one conclusion to be drawn, Giles realized. The old Gypsy’s Tarot cards allowed Justine to control her potential donors. The Slayer’s touch had broken the link to Anya.
“The transfer . . .” Giles’s gaze snapped to the painting of the Judgment card on the easel. No hints of color brightened the contrasting black and gray tones. The transfer of Buffy’s emotional matrix into the last painting should be accelerated to the point of nearly instantaneous according to his calculations, but nothing was happening. Why not?
“Why isn’t Xander moving?” Anya demanded behind him.
“Not now!” Irritated, Giles mulled over the implications of the interrupted Tarot reading. Buffy’s mind should be empowering the painting, but the process seemed to be on hold. “Justine . . .”
Giles moved around the table. Buffy had trapped the artist’s hand between hers and the card. It seemed feasible to assume that both conscious minds had been drawn into the realm of the Judgment card. Then why wasn’t the empowerment pr
ocess underway?
“. . . the battleground where good must prevail.” Giles’s own words regarding the interpretation of the Judgment card provided the clue. Because two minds were inserted into the painting they’ve both retained free will, which might also account for the delay in the actual matrix transfer. His mind raced through the possibilities. The eternal conflict between good and evil would be fought again between Buffy and Justine.
One will prevail and escape.
The other would empower the Judgment card, finishing the deck and initiating Kali’s cosmic reign of destruction.
Unless he made sure there was no deck.
Giles glanced back. Angel was trying to crawl forward, but he seemed to be in acute pain as well as pushing against an invisible barrier. No help there, Giles thought with dismay.
Anya sat on the floor behind Angel cradling Xander’s head in her lap.
“Anya! Come here, please. Now!”
“And leave Xander lying here helpless?” Anya shook her head. “Forget it.”
“Xander is going to die if you don’t help me,” Giles pointed out impatiently.
Xander’s head thumped the floor as Anya jumped up and joined Giles several feet in front of the paintings arrayed along the back wall. “Xander is in the Death card. His mind, that is.”
“In there?” Anya squinted at the black void of Death’s hooded face and shuddered. “Can we get him out?”
“Yes.” Giles scanned the paintings, noting that there was very little distinction between the vibrant color and fine detail in Xander’s Death card and the Tower and Devil paintings that Willow and Oz occupied.
The back of Giles’s neck tingled with a sudden static charge. “We must destroy the paintings. All of them. The fate of the entire universe is at stake here.”
“I don’t want to know, okay?” Anya shuddered. “I just want to save Xander and get out—”
Giles grabbed Anya’s arm and yanked her back.
The rock floor where they had been standing turned molten red, then split open. Blue and gold flames erupted from the ground and lashed out, driving them back from the paintings.
Kali.
Searing metal and sizzling rocks spewed out from another crack that ripped straight for Giles and Anya. “Anya, move!”
“But Xander’s mind is in there!”
“If his body burns, his mind will have nowhere to go! Move!” Shielding his head with his arm, Giles drove Anya back toward the entrance.
* * *
Ever since Giles had figured out that her friends were being mentally relocated into Tarot paintings, Buffy had tried to prep herself for a detour into Tarot land. Even so, it took a few moments to adjust. It wasn’t exactly her idea of a fun, getaway weekend. Sunnydale was practically “sugar and spice and everything nice” compared to the weird, distorted world inside the painting.
Wisps of yellow mist rose from pools of bubbling goop that smelled like rotten fish. Multicolored reptiles slithered around burning rocks and dead trees. Streamers of black moss hung from twisted branches that stood out in stark contrast to the sunny, blue skies above. Beautiful beings with golden wings soared through fluffy white clouds and transformed into horned demons when they swooped too close to the scorched ground.
Heaven, Hell or a combination of both? Buffy shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. Although her body was still in the cave, her mind created an illusion of form within the painting. Justine looked the same, too.
Buffy frowned as she watched Justine. The artist wasn’t supposed to be in here with her and obviously wasn’t thrilled with the unexpected change in plans. Justine turned slowly, taking in the bizarre surroundings, shaking her head in disbelief.
“ . . . where good must prevail.”
Giles’s words echoed in Buffy’s mind.
Prevail over what, exactly?
The sky above split open and a long golden trumpet emerged. The horn emitted a low, keening note that drove the reptiles into tormented fits. Jaws snapped at slashing tails and they devoured themselves. The winged beings were stricken with spasms and fell from the sky, shrieking.
Like the other creatures in the strange world, the sound of the distant trumpet affected Buffy’s emotional center. A terrible loneliness laced with despair welled up within her.
Buffy covered her ears, but the depressing feelings did not diminish with the fading sound of the trumpet. Somehow, the surreal prison of the Judgment card was evoking and augmenting old fears and concerns that she had settled long ago.
She could never escape being the Slayer.
She knew that, had accepted it and moved on . . . but even so, she could not shake the overwhelming sense of hopeless helplessness that immutable fact instilled in her now.
The isolation of her unique status was absolute.
For her, the only way out was death.
“Buffy . . .” Angel’s whispering voice called.
Buffy opened her eyes. Tall and handsome, his dark brooding eyes filled with hurt, Angel stood before her. He held out his hand. His image shimmered, then blinked out.
Gone . . .
The pain of knowing they could never really be together drove Buffy to her knees. She loved Angel with all her heart and soul as he did her, but the purity and depth of their love were the very things that kept them apart.
Her love was Angel’s doom.
So she was alone.
Not quite, she realized, as a montage of images drawn from her memory appeared in gruesome detail on the smoking landscape.
Demons from her past—the vampire Master who had killed her; Eyghon, who sought to destroy Giles; the dismembered parts of the Judge; the fraternity mentor Machida; and Acathla, who had swept Angel into Hell—mocked her. She had defeated them all, but they were mere harbingers of the more powerful and insidious evils amassing within the Hellmouth.
Buffy cringed as the witches of Sunnydale faded in to dance among their demonic kin. The ancient Shugra laughed and hurled a bolt of red, primal magick. Catherine Madison emerged in a flash of indigo light. Ethan Rayne applauded from the sidelines when the hideous blob of the egg-laying Bezoar suddenly burst through the ground.
Drusilla whispered in Buffy’s ear. “It’s not over, yet.”
Buffy shrank back. It will never be over. It didn’t matter where she went or what she did—anyone close to her would be in constant danger.
Too many would die.
Too many had died.
Jenny Calendar, Stephen Platt, Dr. Gregory, Debby Foley, Principal Flutie, Herbert the pig . . . the list went on and on, endlessly. . . .
The crushing guilt was more than Buffy thought she could stand.
* * *
Justine’s fear of the Queen of Wands had not been unfounded. Although she had heeded the cards’ warning, Buffy Summers had become a huge obstacle on the road to her ultimate goal.
Worse, Justine thought as the extent of her predicament became clear. Buffy’s interference had transported her own mind into the Judgment painting, too. She shut her eyes, hoping that if she rejected the bizarre, disgusting elements of the heaven and hell she had created she would somehow be shifted back where she belonged. She refused to look when the low, mournful wail of a horn blared from above.
This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen!
Keeping her eyes shut, Justine threw her arms over her head to block out the disturbing sound and images. She was supposed to be in charge! When Kali’s Major Arcana deck was finished she would have everything she wanted with the mere flip of a card, everything she could never have attained on her own.
The thought reverberated through Justine’s disembodied mind with staggering intensity. Truth trampled the flimsy blockade of self-denial.
She had never doubted her talent. Her teachers as far back as elementary school had encouraged her remarkable abilities, but none had understood her stubborn interest in the fantastic. As a child they excused her imaginative creatures and magical scenes as a phase she’d
outgrow. Her instructors had not been so forgiving in art school. Such self-indulgence, they said, was a waste of her talent because the fine-art world would never take fantasy seriously.
She had switched to sofa-art seascapes in decorator color schemes and portraits so she could make a passable living—until she had discovered Hovan’s notes and Tarot deck. With the power of the Kali Major Arcana her ancestors had been too cowardly to create, she would attain respect and financial security with her fantasy work . . . success she hadn’t been willing to work for on her own, win or lose.
A vision snapped into Justine’s mind, a self-portrait stripped of the façade she had adopted. Gaunt and skeletal, she saw herself for what she was: a creature without substance, hollow and bitter, seeking vengeance on the innocent for her own shortcomings. Moaning in torment, Justine collapsed.
“You must fight or die,” a coarse, low voice hissed. “You are my chosen—”
“Kali?” Justine opened her eyes. A red lizard with turquoise eyes flicked a long, forked tongue at her arm. She pulled away, jumped to her feet.
“Fight!” The voice was all around her. “Only in victory can you escape.”
Bolstered by the presence of the dark goddess, Justine pushed her self-doubt aside and focused on Buffy. The Queen of Wands cowered in trembling agony, locked in personal combat with her own inner demons.
Perhaps, Justine thought, this is how it’s supposed to be, after all. Judgment was nothing less than the battle between good and evil.
In the end only one would prevail and escape the Tarot.
Justine grinned. Buffy couldn’t win against the power of Kali.
* * *
Willow listened to the scraping sound of the huge stones closing in on her from all sides. She had been sitting inside the dark tower completely out of touch with the real world for what seemed like days but was probably only hours. She had kept alert with a modicum of perk by running over spells in her mind and assuring herself that Giles and Buffy were working on a way to set her, Oz, and Xander free. Now, suddenly, her relatively safe position as an observer within the Tarot world changed.
Something slimy slithered over her hand.
Doomsday Deck Page 12
