Then a shadow whipped past her and met Chirayoju head on. Claws ripped the air, ripped flesh, and Willow’s body was flung backward to the earth.
Buffy blinked.
Angel stood over Chirayoju, his face twisted and feral. The back of his shirt was torn to shreds and long ragged wounds, stained crimson, were already healing.
“You’re not going to touch her again,” Angel said, his voice that low rumble Buffy knew so well—was so incredibly relieved to hear. “She might not want to do it, but if it comes to it, I’ll kill that body you’re in to keep you from getting to Buffy.”
Buffy’s relief evaporated. The Slayer’s stomach lurched and a dagger of ice thrust itself into her chest. She reached out a hand as Angel advanced on the demon.
“Angel . . .” she gasped. “No.”
CHAPTER 17
Giles felt nauseous. Cordelia wasn’t helping.
“Giles, what are we going to do?” Cordelia asked desperately.
Giles didn’t tell her that she’d been asking the same question for the past four minutes, barely interrupting herself to breathe. Nor did he mention that his own mind was in as much turmoil as his stomach as he worked feverishly to answer that question.
But he did know that he’d been unnecessarily cold to Cordelia, and he regretted it.
“Cordelia, I must apologize.” He sighed. “I’ve been terribly short with you, and I’m afraid it’s because I’m feeling rather useless at the moment,” he admitted sheepishly. “You see, I really don’t know how to withdraw these spirits from Willow and Xander. I had hoped that if we kept up with Sanno—Xander—that I might be able to speak with it, to learn enough to stop this insanity.”
Cordelia watched the receding figure of Xander. Giles followed her gaze. “And we’re losing him, huh. He’s getting away from us.”
“He’s getting away from us,” Giles agreed.
“Well, what about your books?” Cordelia asked hopefully. “There’s gotta be something there, right? You’ve got the skinny on every nasty thing that’s ever walked the Earth.”
“Well, perhaps not all of the nasty things,” Giles murmured, then looked at her. “Researching this could take all night, and this is happening right now. Not to mention that until we know where Xander—where Sanno—is going, we won’t know where the battle is going to be fought.” He looked glumly at the horizon, where Xander was fast disappearing.
Cordelia cocked her head at Giles and frowned.
“What did I say?” he asked.
“Well, only something clueless. I think.” Cordelia hesitated, then went on. “You showed us yourself in the museum, Giles. If they’re going to have it out, it’ll be in that Japanese garden place. Don’t you think?”
Giles paused, eyebrows raised. He looked far ahead, where Xander’s possessed form melted into the night. It made sense. If he recalled the layout of Sunnydale correctly, they did seem to be heading in that direction.
Which meant they didn’t need to follow Xander at all. And suddenly, Giles had an idea or two about possession. It might even be worth giving an old-fashioned exorcism a try.
“I can see the Giles-mind in action,” Cordelia declared hopefully. “Usually a frightening thing, but please tell me you’ve got something.”
Giles spun, and turned to walk back the way they came.
“Wait. Where are you going?” Cordelia demanded.
“The library,” Giles replied. “Come on, Cordelia, I’ll need your help.”
“But what about Xander?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder.
Giles stated the obvious. “We can’t keep up.”
She tried one more time. “But I’ve always been useless with research.”
Giles gestured for her to follow him. “Well, it’s time we changed that then, isn’t it?”
“We should get your car.”
“Agreed.” He kept walking.
* * *
In the library, Cordelia was too nervous for this sitting around and thumbing through books stuff. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair and said to Giles, “I don’t even know how to spell exorcism.”
“Look,” he said excitedly, as the fax machine rang.
He gestured for her to join him as the paper unspooled. With an excited flourish, he ripped it off.
“ ‘Monsieur Giles, so sorry to hear of troubles in Sunnydale. I have fragments of Appendix 2a of Silver’s Spells, published much later than your edition. Pages thirty-two through thirty-four only. She writes most excitedly of the sword’s movement after the earthquake in Kobe. There was fear of escape of two spirits within. New enchantments were added, disks, I think, and the sword was put in Tokyo Museum. That is all I have at this time. You might try Heinrich Meyer-Dinkmann in Frankfurt, and of course you must have consulted Kobo at Tokyo University. Kindest regards, Henri Tourneur.’ ”
“All right, that’s confirmation that the disks are wards,” Giles said.
“All fight,” Cordelia agreed.
“Do keep looking.” He gestured to the two-foot-tall stack of books he’d gathered on the table. “I’ll try Meyer-Dinkmann. And it’s e-x-o-r-c-i-s-m. I suggest you write it down.”
“Giles.” She shook her head. “What I mean is I am not getting anywhere. I can’t even see the words. All I see is Xander’s face when we found him in the bushes. And in the hospital. And now.” She swallowed hard. “I can’t concentrate.”
Giles put down his book and moved behind her. “But we must,” he said gently. “I, too, am distracted. But this is what we can do to help him. It’s all we can do.”
“Then he’s in big trouble,” she muttered.
Giles was on the phone to Berlin.
“Guten Tag, hier spricht Giles,” he began.
“Herr Giles! A pleasure!”
“That could be my job, if I spoke German,” Cordelia muttered. “I like talking on the phone. But no, I have to look up exorcism.”
“Ja, ja, vielen Dank,” Giles said, and hung up. “Well.”
She looked up hopefully. “Yes?”
“Meyer-Dinkmann couldn’t put his hands on it, but he’s read more of Appendix 2a than Tourneur. It appears that there was an actual Incantation of Sanno, and it has all the details about how to bind spirits into swords.” He looked dazed. “You know, Cordelia, this is rather how Miss Silver went about her research, only of course everything was much slower in her day. Imagine what that woman could have accomplished given a fax, a telephone, and the vast resources of the Internet!”
“Yeah,” Cordelia piped. “So where is the Incantation of Sanno?”
“Meyer-Dinkmann said it’s been uploaded onto the Net,” Giles said enthusiastically. “He said he’d have, ah, downloaded the file for us, but his computer is temporarily down for an upgrade of some sort. But if I understand computers, we can simply access the topic we wish and type in a key word to see if we have any matches.”
“Okay!” Cordelia said brightly, saved from the book stack. “Let’s do it.”
He moved his shoulders as he continued. “I haven’t the foggiest notion how to go about it, however. We need Willow.”
“We need Willow,” Cordelia agreed glumly.
* * *
Buffy and Angel caught Chirayoju off guard, and together, were able to hurl the thing, in Willow’s body, over the bony, upraised fingers of a dead cherry tree. Buffy fought to catch her breath as the monster landed in the dirt.
“We can’t keep this up,” Angel murmured to the girl he loved. “We have to finish it.” He looked at her flushed, drawn face. “Buffy, we have to kill Willow.”
Wildly the Slayer shook her head. “No. No way. Look, why don’t you go? It hasn’t torched me with that magic fire because it wants my bod. It can’t kill me, I can’t kill it. Stalemate. We could use some Giles-type help here.”
Angel stared at her. “It may not want to kill you. That doesn’t mean it won’t. I’m not going anywhere.”
Chirayoju rose to a standing position and brushed the dirt off
its crimson robes with theatrical distaste. “I find this fighting style most plebeian,” it said. Its right arm was crooked, and it limped as it moved forward.
Angel scrutinized Chirayoju’s movements as it prepared to launch another attack, posturing like a martial arts master. Willow’s body was badly injured. He knew Buffy couldn’t stand to see her suffer, even if she wasn’t Willow at the moment. But Angel would do whatever it took—including destroying Willow, who was his friend, too—to make sure Buffy got out of this alive.
“Buffy, you know what must be done,” my love, he added silently, pitying her. Wishing he could lift the burden of being the Chosen One from her shoulders for just five minutes. But that would do nothing. And she was the Chosen One. There was no way she could be anything less, not even for a heartbeat.
Looking very frightened and very young, she lifted her chin in defiance. Her eyes were huge in her face, but her jaw was set and hard. Her shoulders squared. “I won’t do it.”
“Then I will,” Angel said firmly.
“No!” Buffy cried.
Chirayoju the vampire rose straight into the air and made fists of its hands, launching fireballs at them. Buffy and Angel rolled in opposite directions as the balls seemed to track them, then exploded into the earth as the two successfully eluded them. The dry brush and the brittle trees lit up like fireworks.
Buffy murmured, “Okay, maybe it doesn’t want my bod.”
She frowned, as something occurred to her. “And how come you were so late, anyway?”
Another volley of fireballs careened toward them. Angel leaped on top of Buffy and rolled her out of the way. As she lay beneath him, he said, “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed that the rest of Chirayoju’s playmates kind of disappeared.”
“Yeah. A likely excuse,” she said, as he let her up and she assumed a Slayer’s fighting stance. “You probably just went out for cigs.”
“Gave ’em up,” he assured her. “They take years off your life.” Then he cried, “Look out!”
Chirayoju hurtled itself from the sky straight at Buffy.
“If you will not give yourself to me, then you will be eliminated! Choose, Slayer!”
Buffy jumped into the air and pummeled the vampire demon with a double kick, then flipped herself backward, catching herself at the last minute with her hands and pushing off them sideways, out of the way of Willow’s body as it slammed hard on the ground.
“That answer your questions, Chumley?” Buffy asked. She got in a couple of quick kicks before Angel grabbed it by the shoulders and punched it hard, wincing as he heard a tiny gasp that sounded very much like Willow.
“Please,” he heard, in Willow’s voice. “Please.”
“Stop!” Buffy shouted.
“It’s a trick, Buffy,” Angel called to her. “It’s playing on your feelings. Don’t listen to it.”
“I’m allowing her to feel the pain,” Chirayoju said, pulling itself away from Angel and focusing its attention on Buffy. It didn’t even bother to look at him. “And it hurts, Slayer. It hurts more than you can imagine. Certainly more than she could—until now.”
Tears welled in Buffy’s eyes as she panted, fighting to catch her breath. She said unsteadily, “Hurt her any more, and I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”
Chirayoju laughed. “There is nothing you can do, is there? Except for one thing.” It smiled. “I want your body, Slayer.”
She sneered at it. “Sorry, I’ve got a steady.”
Suddenly Chriayoju flew away from Buffy and focused its gaze on Angel. It said in a hypnotic voice, “You are my slave, vampire. You will do as I say.”
Buffy gaped as Angel’s face grew slack and blank. His dark, intense eyes stared hard at the vampire demon. “You will begin to walk. You will walk until the sun comes up. And then you will die.”
“No!” Buffy shouted.
Chirayoju smiled at Buffy in victory. It said, “Thus will he die, along with the girl whose body you are killing.”
“Angel!” she cried.
“Don’t worry, Buffy, you’re not like other girls, and I’m not like other vampires!”
Angel flew at Chirayoju and grabbed it around the neck. Angel bared his fangs, preparing to lower his mouth to Willow’s throat, growling savagely.
Chirayoju said to Buffy, “I will let him kill her.”
“Stop,” Buffy said tiredly. “Okay. You win. Angel, let it go.” Smiling grimly, she held out her hand. “Mr. Cheerios, congratulations. You’ve just won the big showcase on Let’s Make a Deal.”
“No, Buffy,” Angel said.
“Yes, Buffy,” Buffy replied unhappily. She said to the vampire. “Let me say good-bye to him.”
“No tricks,” it said suspiciously, as Angel glowered at it.
“No tricks,” she assured it. “But I want something in return, or no deal.”
“You dare—” it began.
“Shut up!” Buffy snapped. “You want my help? Then be quiet and listen. You don’t attack him or Willow after you take me over. That’s my condition.”
It paused. Considered.
“That is your sole condition?”
“I’d like to make a list, but I figure that’d be pushing it,” she retorted. Her heart was pounding. She was scared, but she wasn’t about to let it know that. And there were worse things than being possessed by ancient Chinese demon vampires.
There was always math.
“Agreed,” Chirayoju said. “I will not harm Weeping Willow, or the vampire you call your mate.”
“Well, not my mate, exactly,” she said, reddening as she glanced at Angel. “That sounds so . . . um, primitive.”
Angel pleaded, “Buffy, don’t do this.”
She walked a short distance away as Angel reluctantly let the demon go. Buffy touched the chain around her neck, tried to find the clasp without being obvious about it, and gave it a yank as Angel caught up with her.
Protectively, desperately, he put his arms around her.
“Buffy, you don’t know what it’s like to be taken over by evil,” he whispered. “I do. I can’t let you go through with this.”
“You don’t have a choice, Angel,” she said. “Please, just help me.”
She lowered her gaze to her fist. “It has a jones for this little disk thingy. Willow accidentally knocked it off the sword just before she cut herself. I figure it helped set Chirayoju free. When it saw it around my neck, it got all hyper.”
She gathered the chain up in her fist and pressed it into his. Instantly, a look of pain crossed over his face. Her eyes widened and she glanced down, to see a small wisp of smoke trailing from his closed hand.
“Oh, the cross,” she said, remembering that she had been wearing the silver cross he had given her the first night they met. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He gave her a pained, crooked smile. “It’s a good kind of hurt.”
“Get it to Giles. He’ll know what to do. He’s like Scotty, you know, on Star Trek?” She paused. “Wow. You probably watched it when it first came on in the sixties.”
But Angel wasn’t swayed by her change of subject. “Buffy, please,” he whispered. “Don’t do it.”
She gazed up at him fearfully. She wondered if she would ever be in Angel’s arms again. She guessed he was wondering the same thing, because he looked very, very worried and held her too tight.
“Kiss me?” she whispered. “For luck?”
“I love you,” he murmured.
Their lips met. She wanted to fling her arms around him but she held the kiss, feeling his mouth against hers, a coolness in the fever of her terror. To be possessed by evil . . . she couldn’t imagine a worse fate.
Except dying possessed by evil.
She was the first to pull away.
“Okay, Mr. Cheerios,” she said jauntily, “I’m ready.” She turned to face the monstrous evil as it glided up to her and grabbed up her hand. Its grip burned her as the cross must have burned Angel.
“Reme
mber your promise,” she said, swallowing hard. “No running in the halls.”
“To the last, your weak and pointless jokes,” it said.
“Next stop, Comedy Central,” she replied unsteadily.
“Buffy,” Angel said. “Buffy, stop. Don’t go through with it.”
It straightened her fingers and sliced at its own cheek. “My blood,” it explained, smearing her hand against the wound.
“Willow’s,” Buffy said. “It’s Will—” She inhaled deeply as something rammed hard through her chest, knocking her completely senseless.
Then she was surrounded by screaming—agonized and hopeless screaming. It went on and on until she thought she wouldn’t be able to stand it for another second. Then it grew louder.
She heard Willow cry, “Buffy!”
Then she was burning up, standing inside a firestorm that ate away every inch of her being. She writhed as flames whooshed around her, burning through her lungs, her vocal cords, her ears.
She trembled, freezing, in utter silence. She looked left, right; but where she was, endless blackness stretched in all directions. She tried to move, but she was frozen to the . . .
to the . . .
to nothing.
She was utterly, vastly nowhere.
Somewhere, very far away, she heard a voice she once had known very well. With a laugh, it spoke:
“I have won.”
CHAPTER 18
Stop!” Angel roared.
Buffy stopped. Angel stood to bar her path and stared into her eyes. But she wasn’t there. Everything that was Buffy had disappeared from her eyes, the spark that was her soul was missing. Still there, he knew . . . from painful experience. But buried as deep as the worst of secrets.
“I vowed to the Slayer that I would not attack you,” Chirayoju said, Buffy’s lips forming the vampire’s words.
Vampire. Yes, but unlike any vampire Angel had ever faced. When it still wore its own flesh, Chirayoju must have been a great sorcerer. That was the only explanation Angel could imagine for the demon’s power. It was essentially a ghost, a bodiless demon spirit that, when merged with a human host, made a vampire. Just like him. But nothing like him at all.
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