One thing was obvious: Sarah Dinsdale had taken the eastern fork.
Samantha spurred her horse onward. Night fell quickly this time of year, and the slayer knew she must find Sarah soon, or she would lose her under cover of darkness.
But by late dusk Samantha realized the witch had left no further evidence of her passing this way, indeed, if she had taken this direction in the first place.
Samantha brought her horse to a halt and fumed. Flummoxed by a witch! She felt very stupid, which made her very, very angry.
Suddenly the walls of the dream shifted a few hours into the night. The seventeenth-century Slayer sat by a campfire. She was alone, without a captor to keep her company; even the corpse of a witch would have been an improvement, because then Samantha would have had her satisfaction to keep her warm.
The forest was quiet, devoid of insect noises and animal calls, and it was still—no breeze rustled the leaves, no animal wandered about. Not even the owls hooted in the trees.
Samantha knew this silence was unnatural. The forest was a live, vibrant place. It was this quiet only when the presence of some malevolent force made it so.
Samantha yawned. She had been traveling nonstop for the past three weeks and had expected to rest once in Salem. She needed time to refresh herself, and to think. It didn’t appear she’d have it anytime soon.
She tore off a piece of dried meat with her teeth, sat on a log and watched the fire. Samantha didn’t regret being the Slayer of this time—in fact, she rather enjoyed ridding the earth of unclean abominations—but she disliked the lonely nights.
She thought of roads she might have taken, opportunities seemingly offered up by God’s will millions of years ago. In truth, only eight years had passed since Samantha had first embarked on the quest, but each year seemed like a lifetime.
Suddenly—what? A sound of some sort, but it ceased almost the moment it began.
It had happened there, in the brush.
Samantha picked up her flintlock—she’d refilled the powder just this morning—and with her other hand took a torch from the fire.
Her every sound was accentuated, from the crunching of pebbles underfoot to the soft rustle of a branch she shifted to get a better look at the place from which the sound had come. None of those noises, however, could match the pounding, pounding, pounding of her heart. She was convinced the thunder in her chest and temples could be heard all the way to New York.
A cluster of leaves and twigs near the ground moved.
The thunder stopped; Samantha’s heart felt like it had collapsed. But a bittersweet taste in her mouth forestalled the fear. It was the taste she always got when she knew she was in the presence of an abomination. Every chance she had to rid the Earth of one of those infernal things made her thrilled to be alive. And every thrill erased a thousand regrets.
She moved in, wishing for a third arm so that she might hold forth her rapier as well.
She shook the torch and yelled. Not the most cautious move, but certain impulses toward danger were among her more self-destructive traits.
The move worked. Fortunately or not—mostly not, from Buffy’s perspective. Because it darted out! And it was charging full out like a giant spider, weaving from side to side with every step, yet never wavering from its basic direction: straight toward Samantha Kane!
It leapt, grabbing Samantha’s throat with gray, decomposing fingers that were amazingly strong. They squeezed Samantha’s neck. Hard.
Samantha dropped her torch and her pistol and grabbed it by the stump at the end of its hand. Actually, that’s all it was—a disembodied hand, but it was one that could move of its own accord, with a will of its own. Samantha couldn’t pry the fingers loose. Her face and lungs felt like they were about to explode.
She suddenly remembered her knife. She began butchering the hand. Tearing off the skin was easy: the hand was about the size of a rabbit, and Samantha had skinned plenty of those.
She whittled away at the muscles, yet the bones of the fingers squeezed just as hard on their own. They had no need of muscles—exactly the sort of thing Samantha had come to expect from such sorcerous vileness.
One by one, she cut the finger bones from the hand. Lacking even a palm, the fingers still tried to hang onto her throat. Samantha had to break them off with her own hands.
She seethed with anger and shivered in disgust. With the simplest of lures, the witch had drawn Samantha into a trap. This really gnawed at Samantha’s pride—she was the best hunter and tracker in the northern colonies who didn’t wear war paint and worship like a heathen, and she’d been tricked like a novice.
Samantha noticed her mount was nervous and was trying to pull its reins free.
She picked up another torch from the fire and somewhat impulsively, but with a growing sense of horror, peered deeper into the bush.
Other body parts approached: Another hand walked on fingers. One full arm and the two halves of another rolled toward her. At least the head was still attached—though to a legless torso. That meant the head and torso had to pull themselves forward with the use of the neck, teeth and chin, a process that had wreacked havoc with the corpse’s freshly decaying flesh.
The eyes looked toward Samantha. The head tilted sideways so it could speak more easily. “Samantha,” the broken mouth said. “I’ve come for you. Wait for me. . ..”
Now Samantha knew what had happened. Sarah had used her witchcraft after coming upon, and perhaps butchering, this pitiful wretch. Then she had placed a spell on the pieces to find and kill Samantha.
Samantha took aim at the center of head with her flintlock. She fired once, and the disembodied head’s skull and brain exploded in all directions.
That didn’t stop the other body parts, though. They were still coming for her, as quick as the) were able.
Obviously the time had come to leave. Samantha kicked out the fire, got on her horse and lit our with all possible speed, using only the moonlight to guide her.
CHAPTER 3
The gathering was a spontaneous event to which everyone had been invited. It was being held in a giant cavern on the outskirts of the Lair, lit by fires whose embers burned farther below than anyone wanted to know.
Any normal person would have found the heat outrageous, yet those here thought it rather comfortable. The crowd focused their attention on the stage, which featured a podium, a microphone and a picture of the Master that took up the entire rear curtain.
Equally spontaneous was the deafening roar the crowd made at the behest of a few minions when the Master walked onto the stage. Bathed in a spotlight, the Master took a few bows, waved at a few demons he had a professional relationship with and then basked in the general adulation.
The entire affair was climaxed by the unexpected appearance of the biggest, baddest fallen angel in the hierarchy of evil—Old Scratch himself! He presented to the stunned, humble Master a plaque inscribed To THE MASTER OF EVIL, EXCEPTIN’ OLD SCRATCH HIMSELF.
“Sire! Does this mean you’re setting me free?”
“Not a chance, skull-face,” Old Scratch said, drawing a big laugh from the crowd. “Now go away, boy, you bother me!”
The crowd roared, seeing the Master wallowing in his own hotheaded despair.
The Master reached out for the hooves at the end of Old Scratch’s legs. “Don’t do it! I beg you! Just tell me what you want to do to me and I’ll inflict the same unspeakable punishment on somebody else! Please!”
Old Scratch did not respond. He did not even use that hideous gurgle of boiling hot blood reserved for any cowering servant who had committed the most serious transgression. In fact, come to think of it, there weren’t even those great, rock-hard hooves about. The Master could not find them to grab.
The Master took a chance and looked up. Old Scratch was nowhere to be seen. The crowd, the lights and the stage were gone. The Master was back in his underground prison, wallowing on one of the tunnel floors.
He had been asleep. Dreaming.
A nightmare.
The Master chuckled as he stood up. The cheap irony did not escape him: He too had been using dreams to serve his own ends. He thought it excellent that his own subconscious had reminded him what powerful, unpredictable forces dreams could be.
The others, however, wouldn’t so lucky. They didn’t have his unique insight into the unnatural order of things. And because they lacked this knowledge, the Slayer, her Watcher and her chattering lackeys would be dust, and he would rule his rightful realm once more.
The Master laughed until the echoes rang up and down the tunnels like a scream from an infinite abyss. Even his minions, who had thought they were immune to most effects of complete, abject fear, quivered in their three-toed boots.
* * *
Xander and Willow caught up with Buffy on her way to school. Childhood friends, their conversation often revolved around matters Buffy couldn’t possibly relate to.
Today, their preoccupation with their kindergarten days left her free to brood over her dreams. Given all that Giles had said, the dreams had to be regarded with suspicion.
What she’d revealed to Willow about her knowledge of the period was only the beginning. Buffy found she knew things about the people of Salem and North Salem that couldn’t have been learned from any history book.
Including the inner joy that had surged through Samantha Kane when she’d slain her first vampire.
They were only a few blocks away from the Sunnydale High rear entrance when Buffy became vaguely aware of someone trying to get their attention.
He was a late-middle-aged man in a baggy old suit, with a bowtie and a battered old hat. He carried a large, old-fashioned flash camera.
“You’re that newspaper reporter I saw on TV last week,” said Xander before the man could open his mouth, “the one who believes mad cow disease was caused by the ghosts of buffalo who’d been forced to cross the Atlantic for Buffalo Bill’s traveling Wild West Show in the 1890s!”
“No, no, it’s more complicated than that,” the man replied defensively. “My words were taken out of context.”
“This gentleman shows up a lot on the Channel Three News ‘Conspiracy Theory of the Week’ slot,” Xander explained to the girls. “I forget his name—”
“Darryl MacGovern,” said the reporter.
“He also broke the story to the supermarket rags about the outbreak of three-legged frogs in Spokane, Washington,” continued Xander. “And he claims the animated TV show Teenage Mutant Two-Fisted Possums is actually propaganda created by aliens to prepare us for what they look like when they invade the planet.”
“I never said that!” protested MacGovern. “Not exactly, anyway!”
“So you work for Channel Three?” asked Willow, trying to be casual.
“No, they just use me for their conspiracy segment whenever they can’t find anything else suitably outrageous.”
“So, if you only do TV part-time, who else do you work for?” Buffy asked suspiciously.
“The Clayton Press,” said MacGovern. “Well, to be honest, I used to work there. The publisher fired me three weeks ago. Apparently he found my frequent appearances on a show about conspiracy theories compromised my integrity as a reporter.” He snorted. “As if such a thing were possible.”
“It’s a cruel world, but sometimes it’s a fair one,” said Xander.
“So what brings you to Sunnydale High?” asked Buffy innocently, though she had a bad feeling about this.
“A story!” said MacGovern enthusiastically. “One so fantastic the paper’ll beg me to come back. But I’ll have enough name-value recognition to start my own exposé show.”
“On Channel Three?” Willow asked.
“No! On the Occult Channel!” MacGovern exclaimed. “I’ll make cable after this!”
“You may smell a story,” said Buffy, “but I smell a rat!”
MacGovern leaned into her. “Perhaps you can help me. I understand a lot of peculiar doings have been going on in Sunnydale lately.”
“No kidding,” said Buffy dryly. “Nobody told me!”
“Things are pretty quiet around here,” said Xander. He and Willow yawned.
“I have this talent for stumbling across things that defy rational explanation. The frustrating part is, no matter what I do, no matter how careful I am, I can never get to the bottom of a story without losing all my tangible proof!”
“So why are you here?” Willow asked with a smile. She couldn’t help herself; she thought this guy was funny.
“A few weeks ago, I realized I was coming out of a cloud. Something had been nagging at my natural curiosity for months, yet I’d been unable to verbalize it. I mean, it’s my business to know whether or not something’s any of my business. Understand what I’m talking about?”
Buffy got a sinking feeling, as if her stomach were being thrown over a ravine with the rest of her soon to follow.
“In fact, I realized I’d heard a whole lot of unsubstantiated rumors about things that were happening in Sunnydale. So after about sixteen hours pondering over the situation from the vantage point of the conspiracy theory pages on the Web, I did some research in the files of the Clayton Press and other major suburban newspapers in the vicinity. And you know what I found? Of course you don’t. I discovered nothing.”
The three teens looked at each other in confusion.
“Nothing?” Willow echoed.
“Exactly! And that’s the whole point!”
“No kidding,” said Willow sympathetically. “You look a little pale. Have you been taking all your mineral supplements?”
“No. Listen, no town has nothing. Everybody has something. Something to hide. Something to deny—”
“No we don’t!” Xander tried.
“Yeah,” Buffy echoed. “We don’t have nothing. . . .” She trailed off. “Where was I?”
An awkward silence passed between the reporter and everyone else. Buffy stewed, betrayed by fate in the form of a nosy flat-footed reporter, yet she had to struggle to conceal her emotions. The tendency of most people not to believe what’s right in front of them, which had enabled her to live a semblance of a normal life, was now playing tricks with her. She could only wonder how many people might be noticing, for the first time, the events that had recently occurred in Sunnydale thanks to the existence of the Hellmouth below.
“So what are you trying to tell us?” asked Willow aggressively—which was unusual in itself.
“Nothing!” MacGovern answered forcefully.
“So you’re telling us you’re going to hunt for nothing?” Buffy spoke slowly as if to a child.
“Exactly!” MacGovern seemed excited someone finally understood. “I’m going to find this nothing and expose it as something!”
“Uh-oh gotta split!” said Xander suddenly. He took MacGovern’s hand and pumped it vigorously. “Gonna be late!”
“Can’t miss homeroom!” said Willow.
“Nice meeting you,” said Buffy, leading the others away. “Good luck finding nothing.”
* * *
“So, Giles, still searching for portents of things to come?” Xander asked briskly as he entered the library with Buffy and Willow. They often stopped by right after school just to see if anything was going down.
“The Eibon is nothing to joke about,” replied Giles sternly.
“What else we know about this Prince Ashton Eisenberg besides the fact he was two tamales short of a full plate?” Willow asked.
“Reliable sources say he died as a result of spontaneous combustion,” said Giles, “that is, his body burned up of its own accord, without benefit of fuel or match.”
“Fascinating,” said Buffy. “But we’ve got a problem.”
“You first,” said Giles, with a smile.
“Okay.” Quickly she told Giles about their encounter with Darryl MacGovern.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Xander asked.
“It’s worse—it’s disastrous!” Giles exclaimed. “This MacGovern characte
r is a veritable stalkerazzi, well-known in legitimate scholarly occult circles as a complete pest. He never rests until he gets his story or meets a total dead end, whichever comes first.”
“At least we can always use Xander as a decoy until we can throw him off the scent entirely,” said Willow with a sigh.
“Thanks a lot,” said Xander.
“It’s a good plan,” said Giles, “but I bet MacGovern is just a pawn in some greater game. He may be only an insignificant red herring, sent to throw us off the real scent while the real pieces come into play.”
“Maybe we should introduce him to the Master,” said Xander. “Then MacGovern will start bugging him for an exclusive.”
“We could,” said Willow, “but that would be wrong.”
“Giles, what did you mean by ‘You first’?” asked Buffy.
“Last night I had a dream that disturbed me greatly,” Giles replied.
Buffy literally bit her tongue.
“It was so vivid, so real—it was unlike any dream I had ever experienced. After all, it had a coherent narrative—at least as much as the events it portrayed allowed it to be.”
“Were these actual historical events?” Buffy asked.
“As near as I can determine, yes,” said Giles. “I was clearly dreaming about a past life. I have long suspected I might be the reincarnation of an earlier Watcher or two, but never in my wildest flights of fancy did I think I might be spiritually related to the legendary late-seventeenth-century Watcher Robert Erwin.”
“What were you doing in the dream?” asked Willow.
“Not very much,” said Giles. “I’m afraid I had succumbed to a raging fever and was delirious. Robert Erwin thought the fever had supernatural origins, which I tended to agree with.”
“Oh come on!” said Xander. “The supernatural can’t explain everything! Maybe he was just sick!”
“That is possible, but I remember his paranoid ravings quite clearly,” said Giles. “Anyway, Erwin was under the care of an innkeeper and his wife in Boston. Of course he was worried about what the late seventeenth-century Slayer was up to.”
Night of the Living Rerun Page 3
