The real world was no picnic, but it was real. And she had friends who cared about her. Watched out for her. So, she wasn’t a warrior princess, that much was clear. But she knew enough to know that there were things she was good at, things she could do that the others couldn’t. For starters, of all the kids in school, she’d been asked to substitute teach Miss Calendar’s computer course after the teacher had been . . . had been murdered.
Willow Rosenberg might not be able to do back-flips or roundhouse kicks, or even punch really hard. But she was a sorceress when it came to the Internet. On-line, she had power. She was confident. And when she’d woken up that morning, she’d known just what she was going to do: she was going to find her attackers. Or at least, she was going to try. It was what she knew how to do. Then, at least, she would feel as though she had fought back in some small way.
And that was what haunted her still. She hadn’t fought back.
Once she had logged onto the Net, Willow began her search. The local papers, local and state police databases, crime reports from nearby towns. It was going to take a while, but Willow knew that if she was ever going to get over this feeling of helplessness, of horrible vulnerability, she had to do something.
Half an hour later, the library doors opened, but Willow didn’t even look up as Buffy and Giles came in.
“Think carefully, Buffy,” Giles was saying. “How many different demonic voices did you hear coming from inside the Monsignor?”
“Y’know, Giles, I wasn’t really counting,” Buffy replied, obviously tired of the subject. “I was just trying to stay alive. And I thought we’d already established that only one demon could ever exist inside a body at a time.”
“Yes, well, the Monsignor is—or rather, was—the exception that proved the rule. It seems a sixteenth-century Italian noblewoman, a de’ Medici, I believe, had her magician place a horrible enchantment on the Monsignor that acted as some sort of magnet for demons, attracting any of them within the city of Florence to occupy the poor man’s body. Naturally, the strain killed him, and he became a vampire. But the—shall we say—overpopulation of his body also drove the Monsignor quite mad prior to his unfortunate demise, and transformed the demons inside him into gibbering idiots.”
Willow looked up at last, intrigued by the conversation.
“This was the trouble you had last night?” she asked Buffy.
Buffy nodded. “Complete looney tunes. But Giles thinks he was a celebrity or something.”
Willow watched as Giles’s face went from surprise to wounded pride in milliseconds.
“Not at all,” he sniffed. “I merely find it fascinating that the Hellmouth continues to attract creatures that have been widely considered little more than myths for centuries. I have read the Watcher’s journal that stated outright that the Monsignor was nothing but a legend.”
“He might as well be, now,” Buffy said.
“Quite right,” Giles said happily. “You freed him from his curse.”
Willow had the impression that he couldn’t wait to write down Buffy’s latest exploit in his own journal. But the conversation was over, and the two of them moved on to more important things.
Sparring.
While Willow continued her search, Giles put Buffy through the hell she called “Slayer practice”: weapons and martial arts training that more often than not left poor Giles with large welts and bruises he would be hard pressed to explain if he had a love life. That’s why Jenny Calendar had made the perfect girlfriend for him. She knew. Of course, her knowing had also gotten her killed.
Willow kept thinking about Miss Calendar now. Thinking that maybe if she had known what Buffy knew, if she had had that training, maybe she would still be alive. Maybe she would have been able to escape Angel, or hold him off until help arrived.
As she went through the motions of her search, this thought filled Willow’s mind more and more, and she paid less and less attention to what she was doing. Finally, she gave up altogether and turned to watch as Buffy launched kick after kick at a heavily padded Giles. Her fists and feet flew, then landed hard, each blow connecting with a confidence that Willow didn’t think she could ever feel.
Willow wasn’t a fool. She knew that Buffy was capable of things that other girls simply were not. But she also knew that she would benefit from a bit more than the basic self-defense she already knew.
When Buffy and Giles started to fight with long wooden poles called bo-sticks, Willow watched with wide eyes.
Finally, Buffy noticed her.
“Giles, could we take a break for a bit?” Buffy asked sweetly.
For his part, Giles seemed more than relieved to have a few minutes to rest between getting his pride as bruised as his body. He slipped out of his pads and disappeared. Off to the men’s room or the stacks—Willow wasn’t sure which because she honestly wasn’t paying all that much attention.
As soon as he was gone, Buffy strolled over, cocked her head slightly and raised her eyebrows, studying Willow.
“So, are you going to tell me what’s on your mind, or are you going to force me to relive the nightmare game of charades that my mother made me play constantly as a child?”
Willow smiled. “I was just watching you,” she said. “I wish I could fight like that.”
Buffy chewed her lip a moment, then seemed to nod to herself, as though nobody else was watching or would notice.
“This is getting serious,” she said. She pulled up a chair and sat down next to Willow at the computer. “This mugging is really haunting you, isn’t it?”
Willow looked away, shrugged a little. She gestured toward the computer screen. “I’ve been kind of trying to track them down. See if there’ve been a bunch of attacks like this lately or if anyone has been arrested.”
“So what did you find?” Buffy asked hopefully.
“Lots of attacks,” Willow reported. “Unfortunately, most of them sound more like vampires than bullies robbing kids for milk money.”
Willow heard the bitterness in her own voice, but she couldn’t help it. And when Buffy reached out for her hand to comfort her, she couldn’t help but draw back as if she’d been burned. She wanted help, not pity.
“Willow, there wasn’t anything you could have done,” Buffy said. “It wasn’t your fault, and it has nothing to do with being strong. If you had tried to fight them, you might have been hurt worse.”
Willow felt hot tears start to fill her eyes, and she gritted her teeth, determined not to let those tears fall.
“You’re missing the point!” she snapped. “There was something I could have done! I could have fought them, but I didn’t! Buffy, I just froze up—completely paralyzed with fear. I’ve been in situations with you where I knew for a fact my life was in danger. In this case, it wasn’t even that. They didn’t want to kill me, or I’d be dead.”
“Will,” Buffy began, but Willow shook her head.
“Angel wanted to kill me, once. He would have, too, if not for Miss Calendar. Yes, I know that wasn’t really Angel, but that’s not what I’m talking about. He wanted to kill me, but I can still look him in the face. I can talk to him and turn my back on him. I can give him my trust.”
Buffy nodded seriously, and looked as if she wanted to say something, but Willow couldn’t stop herself.
“Maybe that’s because of who he is, but I think it’s because of who I am too. Because when it comes to this life, to Slaying, it doesn’t feel like just me, Willow Rosenberg, against all this horrible stuff. It’s us against them, do you understand?
“But alone in the dark. On that street with nobody around? I froze, Buffy. I didn’t even try to fight back. I haven’t admitted that to anyone, never mind to myself. That’s part of the reason I didn’t report it to the police . . .”
“You didn’t?” Buffy asked, staring at her.
“Of course not,” Willow said. “How was I going to explain where I’d been, where I was coming from, and why I was out without my parents’ permiss
ion?”
Buffy looked sort of embarrassed. “Will, I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t your fault, Buffy,” Willow replied shakily. “It isn’t even my fault, I know that. But I could have prevented it. If I’d been better prepared.”
Buffy seemed to be at a total loss for words. For once, she didn’t know what to say. So she isn’t perfect after all, is she? a small voice in Willow’s head asked.
“Y’know,” Buffy said, “Giles and I are pretty much done now. If you really wanted, I could . . .”
She started to gesture toward the open area of the library, where she and Giles had been training. Willow flinched as if Buffy had slapped her. Now she offers, Willow thought bitterly. Now that I’ve humiliated myself.
Confusion spread through her in an instant. Where had all these bitter thoughts toward Buffy come from? She certainly hadn’t done anything to deserve them. Nothing except trying to be a good friend.
But Willow could not get over the pity she saw on Buffy’s face.
“Know what, I think we should try it another time,” Willow said. “I’m actually still not feeling completely better from yesterday.” She gestured to her arm. “I’m just going to work on this a while longer, and then I’m going to go home.”
“You sure?” Buffy asked, looking a little hurt and confused herself.
“I’m sure,” Willow replied, and offered a smile that she barely meant at all.
Later, when Buffy had left and Giles was toiling away in silence up in the stacks, Willow returned to her computer. But she abandoned her previous search efforts. This time, she began to search for information about weapons from around the world and their uses. She was a smart girl. She would figure them out for herself.
In fact, just looking at several of them—mostly the swords—she could almost feel their weight in her hands. Feel the heft and hear the whickering of steel through air as her blade whipped down toward its target. Feel it slice flesh and snap bone.
Willow’s eyes rolled back in her head for a moment, and she nearly blacked out. Her lids flickered, and she heard a small voice—maybe the voice of her conscience, maybe another voice entirely—whispering in her head.
Yesssss, it hissed.
Her hands flexed around the hilt of an imaginary blade.
Willow’s eyes snapped open.
“Whoa,” she said to herself.
She stood shakily and gathered up her things. Maybe she wasn’t all better after all, she thought. She certainly wasn’t feeling normal.
Normal girls didn’t have daydreams about swords. About . . . murder.
CHAPTER 4
They are screaming.”
The Great Empress Wu bowed low before her own dragon throne, its jade wings outstretched, its pearl eyes gleaming evilly in the glow of oil lamps. Her vast silk robes shimmered across the floor like the Yellow River in a summer sunset. But it was winter now, and near dawn, and deadly cold inside her palace.
On the throne sat Lord Chirayoju, her former Minister of the Interior, who smiled and folded its hands across its chest. Its fingernails were sharp claws. Its teeth were fangs tinged with blood.
It had recently fed.
She herself had brought it the victim, a good man completely undeserving of such a horrible death.
“Tell me, Great Empress, are they screaming in pain or in fear?” it asked, closing its eyes as it anticipated her reply.
“I—I know not.”
Its eyes opened. They were completely black. Soulless. The fires that raged within them were all that was left of the ambitious court sorcerer that Chirayoju once had been. That man, who had toiled for years to wrest the secrets of the universe from the gods themselves, had also died a vile death. But his sacrifice had been the necessary price.
That which remained was immortal. It was a savage demon that flew like a falcon over the fields and paddies of China. It was a merciless spirit that compelled fire to scorch the lands of those who dared oppose it and to burn their sons and daughters alive. It was a force above nature, commanding even the wind.
And it was something worse.
Something magnificent.
It opened its mouth wide and showed the Empress Wu its fangs. She shrank back, and it knew she feared it utterly. After all, she had seen it feed. Beautiful maidens with tiny, bound feet, who meekly submitted to their fate like the dainty peonies they were. Fierce warlords in full armor, their swords and lances drawn and slashing as it advanced on them. The soldiers always fought hard to the end. Chirayoju vastly preferred the valiant tigers to the timorous rabbits.
“If you know not if it is pain or fear, let us go together and observe them,” Lord Chirayoju said, rising.
The Empress could not suppress her shudder as it stepped down from the jade dragon throne and approached her with its hand outstretched. Together they glided from the throne room to the secret door in the lacquer panel behind the great chair. Before its great change, she had graciously taught it where the pressure plate was located and now it smiled at her as it pointed with one taloned finger at the plate and the door magically opened.
The cave entrance was narrow, and Chirayoju invited the Empress to walk ahead. It saw her terror in the stiffness of her back and the manner in which her shoulders rose as she passed in front of its cold, dead body.
It couldn’t help its smile of delight—could barely resist whipping her around and tearing her heart from her chest. But it would be a fleeting joy, and for the moment—perhaps a long moment—it needed her.
She led the way to the first chamber.
With a flick of its hand, Chirayoju illuminated the chill, evil-smelling place. This was the Cavern of Vengeance. The smallest of the three caverns, it reached as high as a dragon’s head. From floor to ceiling it was walled with human bones. These were the remains of Chirayoju’s most illustrious enemies.
The second chamber was the Cavern of Divination. It was larger, and in it Lord Chirayoju kept the treasures that had once belonged to the piles of bones in the first room. It surveyed with pride the heaps of jade, pearls, and silver—the treasure with which it had bought the Empress’s loyalty. Here, too, rested its favorite square cauldrons, where it had performed the human sacrifices that had gained it the knowledge of eternal life—the calling forth of the vampire that had taken the sorcerer’s human life. There were also heaps of dragon bones, which it used to foretell the future.
And Chirayoju had foreseen a glorious future indeed.
The screaming echoed from the third chamber, which was so immense Chirayoju could not see the far wall as it and the Empress passed through the entrance carved to resemble a great fanged mouth. The walls and the ceiling were carved into images of sorcery: monstrous tigers, dragons, and human skulls. Vast columns of ornate pillars held up the ceiling.
This was the Chamber of Justice.
Chirayoju had killed over twenty thousand of its enemies in this place.
Including the sire who had turned Chirayoju, a sorcerer consort to demons and witches, into Chirayoju the vampire, the demon sorcerer.
Now Chirayoju cocked its head and listened. Agony, terror, despair, horror. The four elements of its being.
The Empress shrank back. It took her elbow and urged her onward.
Below them, in an enormous pit, five hundred men screamed as serpents and starved rats attacked them, biting and clawing, stinging, shredding. Around the perimeter, the Empress’s quaking guards thrust their spears at anyone who attempted to scrabble out of the death trap. Not that they could escape. The walls were straight and high, and by now, very slick with blood.
Chirayoju looked at the bulging eyes of its enemies. These were scholars and scribes, men who had dared write about him. Their scrolls and books had already been burned, along with their families, friends, and anyone they might have told of the dread lord that lived in Empress Wu’s mountain fortress.
“It is only pain,” it said with disappointment. Then it brightened as it gestured with its right hand. “
But now it shall be fear.”
Chirayoju swept his hand over the pit. Invisible doors opened in the sides of the pit. With unholy shrieks, legions of vampires rushed from the doors into the whirling mass of human misery. Like the rats, they, too, had been starved for just this occasion.
The blood drove them mad.
As they slaughtered the human prisoners, Chirayoju watched in delight. And some envy.
It, too, was hungry.
But it was also suddenly very tired. That was the sign it had awaited.
With great anticipation, Chirayoju pointed to the ceiling.
“Let us depart, Your Majesty,” Chirayoju shouted into the ear of Empress Wu. “It is time.”
As they hurried from the Cavern of Justice, Chirayoju made a fist. The roof exploded. Chunks of rock crashed down on vampire and human alike.
The dawning sun poured into the hole.
The screaming vampires burned to dust.
* * *
Empress Wu and Chirayoju returned to the throne room. As the ceiling in the third chamber collapsed, the palace shook violently. The alarm was sounded. Earthquake! The Empress’s household was in a panic. Gongs rang. Men shouted and ran to their Empress for protection.
“What if some of them survived?” Empress Wu asked Chirayoju in a shaking, awe-filled voice as her courtiers poured into the throne room.
“I shall deal with them,” it promised her.
But it lied.
Another night fell. The enraged survivors raced through the palace. The fanged, moldy-faced vampires spared no one in their fury.
As the Empress was thrown to the gold-plated floor of her sleeping chamber, she shouted, “Chirayoju! Help me!”
But by then, Chirayoju had flown halfway across the sea.
Let great China become a graveyard, for all it cared.
Its dragon bones had spoken to it a single word.
Japan.
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