by Mel Odom
Zhiyong, dressed in red silk ceremonial robes, stood in the middle of the clearing next to the black onyx altar Willow recognized from the DVD footage Buffy and Angel had gotten. He chanted, his arms straight out at his sides, short swords in his hands. Jia Li, bound and gagged, and Lok, still held in an apparent state of catatonia, lay at his feet.
Kneeling, Zhiyong touched Jia Li with one sword, barely cutting her forehead. Carefully, still chanting, Zhiyong captured a drop of blood on the sword and flicked it onto the altar. When the drop of blood touched the altar, it burst into a brief blue flame that sent a tower of cobalt-blue smoke up into the air before it extinguished. Zhiyong did the same with a drop of Lok’s blood, getting the same effect.
“He is offering them as a sacrifice,” Pak-lah whispered. “Taking their lives will make Sharmma stronger.”
Pure fear ran through Willow’s veins, driving her heart into overload. “We’ve got to stop him.”
“There is little time,” Pak-lah said. “You must hurry. And you must know what it is that Zhiyong hopes to accomplish here tonight.”
The smoke gathered and eddied above the altar as Pak-lah told her. Even as the old man’s words filled her with sick disbelief, the gathering smoke filled her with apprehension.
Something’s moving in there, Willow thought as she watched the smoke. I can see it.
The eddying smoke suddenly stilled, then it coalesced into a serpentine shape twenty-five feet tall. Cold blue fiery eyes formed near the top, then two clawed appendages that could serve as arms or legs lower below. Twisted horns jutted from the top of his head. Beard fringe dangled from the wide chin.
“Oh mighty Sharmma,” Zhiyong chanted, “know that your child stands before you, ready to serve your will.”
“Greetings, Zhiyong,” the smoke-creature rasped in a deep voice. The nostrils filled delicately, testing the air. “There is a human among us.”
“You must go, Willow!” Pak-lah urged, pushing her back the way they had come.
The creature struck quick as lightning, stretching out and snaring Pak-lah and Willow in those fierce, clawed paws. A malicious grin framed the huge, dragonlike face as he pulled them in. “You are a spirit,” Sharmma said to Pak-lah. Then the demon turned to the struggling Willow. “But you are human. Still alive, still fresh. I can smell the blood and the stink of fear within you. It is indescribable. Ambrosia.”
Willow tried to free herself from the incredible grasp. The polished claws were as strong as steel, holding her.
“Free yourself!” Pak-lah said, twisting and jerking in the demon’s other hand. “Free yourself, Willow! You are not part of this place! You are only visiting! Return to your friends! Return to your body! You are not trapped here! He is only making you believe that!”
“Too late!” the great demon howled in delight, cocking his head so he could glare at Willow with one huge eye. He brought her closer, till she could almost have reached out and touched Sharmma’s scaly face. “Too late! I have won! The girl is mine!” He opened his giant maw and tossed Willow inside.
She landed on his tongue, feeling the coarse texture of it rasp against her cheek and exposed skin despite the slick film of saliva that covered everything. The fangs were jagged and pointed, three feet long, and there were dozens of them in double rows.
“Willow!”
On her knees, trying desperately to get to her feet, trying desperately to not believe this was actually happening, Willow peered through the demon’s open mouth at Pak-lah in the clawed paw.
“Return, Willow!” the old man told her. “Return and you will be safe! Don’t let Sharmma convince you—”
The demon’s mouth slammed shut, the fangs razoring closed with grating noises.
Willow slammed her fists against the ivory columns that were the creature’s fangs, feeling the top of the demon’s mouth pressing down against her head and shoulders. Only the open lips permitted any of the baleful green lights to enter the demon’s mouth. Then they closed.
And there was only darkness.
Willow screamed, but she was certain no one heard her.
Chapter 25
“WILLOW!” OZ WATCHED AS WILLOW SCREAMED again, an agonized, despairing scream that he never wanted to hear her make again. Her hand suddenly went limp in his. Then her whole body slumped. “Will!” Buffy called.
Shing stood quickly as Oz reached out and caught Willow before she could hit the library’s floor. “Don’t break the circle!” Shing ordered, holding up a hand toward Buffy.
Buffy halted just outside the circle, totally on the edge of wigging out.
Oz felt the same way. Neither of them had been part of something like this, and watching Willow fall dead— Don’t say dead, dammit, never say dead! —deadweight was unnerving.
“She’s my friend,” Buffy said.
“Then listen to me,” Shing said sternly, “and you will help save her life. Willow is gone far from this place, and she is in a demon’s thrall. The only thing that offers her any protection at all is the sanctity of the circle she created and warded. If you break the circle, the protection will be broken, too.”
Oz patted Willow’s cheek and tried to keep the fear inside him under control. “Willow, can you hear me? Willow? Willow, come on back to me.” He felt the chill of her against his skin, surprised that she’d gone so cold and he hadn’t noticed.
“You did this to her,” Buffy accused. But she stayed outside the circle.
“Hey,” Xander said, stepping up. Anger twisted his bruised and bloody features. “Don’t you think you’re being a little harsh here? You’re just upset because you’re not in that circle.”
Buffy whirled on Xander. “It’s more than that. Shing manipulated Willow’s spell, made her go further than she could have on her own. That’s why she wanted to be with Willow.”
Xander shook his head. “No. No, you’re just being jealous, Buffy. You may be the Slayer, but you’re not perfect. You’ve made mistakes, and you’re just as guilty of poor judgment as anyone in this room. Blame yourself if you want to for this, but leave Shing out of it. She was only trying to help.”
“Poor judgment?” Buffy repeated angrily. “You brought Shing here, and you don’t know anything at all about her.”
“She saved my life,” Xander argued. “Twice. That buys a lot of respect and loyalty on my part.”
“But why did she do that?” Buffy asked. “Was it because you’re as cute as you think you are, or was it because she wanted to use you to get to Willow?”
“Take that back,” Xander demanded.
“Not until you prove me wrong.”
Angel stepped between them. “Maybe we can sort this all out later. We’ve still got a problem.” He pointed at Willow. “And it begins right there in that circle. It ends with wherever Zhiyong is now and whether we can stop whatever it is he’s doing.”
“Guys,” Oz said, a note of hysteria in his voice, his fingers pressed against Willow’s neck, “I’m not finding a pulse.”
Xander and Buffy broke away from each other, worried looks on their faces.
Oz slid his fingers around on Willow’s neck, holding her upper body against his chest, cradling her as he would a child. He stopped somewhere just short of pure panic. “No pulse. No pulse.”
“Oz,” Shing said, kneeling down next to him. She looked into his eyes, and somehow he felt just a little better. “She’s not gone from you, not gone from us. She’s only paused, stuck somewhere in the middle.”
“Can you help her?”
Shing shook her head. “Not me. You. It has to be you. You fulfill her in so many ways the two of you haven’t even dreamed of. One anchors the other. No matter where your lives take you, whether together or separately, you will always be together, one a part of the other. Trust this that I tell you now.”
“What do I need to do?” Oz asked, looking down at Willow. You can’t leave now! There’s so much we haven’t done, so much I haven’t told you or shown you.
&
nbsp; “Fill your heart with her,” Shing whispered. “Fill your heart with her and reach for her, bind her to you that she may find her way.”
Vision blurred by tears that fell now, tracking down his cheeks to land on Willow’s unmoving face, Oz remembered Willow. He thought of her the first time he saw her, the first time he held her, the first time he kissed her.
He remembered what he felt like up on the stage at the Bronze, playing or singing, and looking out to see her in the audience. God, nobody smiled like Willow Rosenberg. Had he ever told her that? Suddenly, he couldn’t remember what he had told her, couldn’t remember if there were words for all the ways he felt about her.
“Willow,” he said, but his voice came out in a painful croak. “Hey, Will, you need to . . . to listen to . . . me.” His voice kept breaking and nothing had ever hurt his throat as much as simply talking to her now. How could anyone even in this world follow a voice like that?
He tried to clear his throat, but only a dry hiss came out. He swallowed, trying desperately to calm himself and reach out for her. God, everything hurt, and there was a growing emptiness around his heart. Does that mean she’s going away, getting farther from me? He didn’t know.
“Willow!” What was the one thing that he did that guaranteed her attention every time? What was it about him that enabled her to pick him out of a crowd at any moment? What was the one thing he had given her that she would always remember?
How long has it been since she stopped breathing? He wanted to know, but he knew he couldn’t bear to ask. It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t let her leave him.
Music entered Oz’s head. Before he’d gotten himself mellow with life and the unplanned things that had a habit of going on in it, the one thing that he’d always been able to do that enabled him to keep on had been music. He could never imagine a time in his life that it wouldn’t be there. Maybe it was because music soothed the maniacal beast within him, but he felt it was more than that.
For him, music was pure and clean and the truest thing he’d ever known. Opening his mouth, Oz began to sing. It was a song he’d written for Willow, for Willow alone, one that had never been heard by another living person. He’d written it and sung it to her one night, and he’d felt how still the whole world had gotten around them. Time had stopped.
The hoarseness faded from his voice, and the pain in his throat went away. He stroked her hair and sang the words.
Then he felt her pulse jump under his fingertips. She took a sudden, sharp breath. Her eyes opened and she looked up at him.
“Hi,” she said weakly.
“Hi yourself,” Oz said.
“How did Zhiyong find the bodies of the miners?” Giles asked.
Willow sat in a chair at the table. She was wrapped in a blanket Giles had gotten from somewhere in the back of the library. She sipped hot chocolate from a Styrofoam cup, her hands still shaking badly with the cold. “Zhiyong had men working near the area where Lok found his ancestor. When Mei-Kao Rong, that’s the ancestor by the way, burst out of the wall and tried to kill Lok, the location kind of popped up on whatever spell they were using to search. Kind of like magical radar.”
“The wall sealed them off from Zhiyong’s spells?” Giles asked.
“Yes.”
“Why weren’t they able to find the mine’s location through their search of old land records?” Giles asked.
“The records had been buried,” Willow replied, remembering what she’d found out from the old newspaper articles she’d found in the Sunnydale Post and from what Pak-lah had told her. “See, eight of the biggest landowners and city fathers in Sunnydale went in together to develop the mine. They’d found a few traces of gold and hoped they were onto a major find. One of them had discovered some kind of Spanish exploration diary that talked about the Sunnydale area, and a gold mine that the Spaniards had found when they were in California. They hired a mining crew to go into the mine, but safety codes weren’t in effect then and a minor trembler shut the mine down.”
“They didn’t try to rescue the men in the mine?” Angel asked.
“Oh, they tried.” Willow sipped more hot chocolate, feeling a little warmer now. “But it didn’t do any good. Too much of the mine had fallen in for them to get to the men in time. Some of the miners had families who petitioned to get the bodies back, but the mine owners wouldn’t reveal where the mine was.”
“So they left them there?” Giles asked.
“Yes.” Willow shivered, remembering the way the shambling corpse had attacked Lok. “And for the last one hundred fifty years, those guei have had nothing but vengeance on their minds.”
“Against the men who sent them there?” Buffy asked.
“Yes. And the families who didn’t come for them. You’ve got to remember, when they become ghosts like that, they’re not exactly sane or generous. No Caspers in that bunch. If they could have reached out to any other families, they would have. As it was, Mei-Kao Rong was able to contact Lok. He’d basically been haunted all his life. Until his grandfather was able to shield him.”
“Okay,” Xander said, “the big question is what Zhiyong is going to do with these dead guys he dug up.”
“Zhiyong is going to harvest the pos from the corpses,” Willow said. “Then he’s going to help them possess thirty-five of the descendants of those eight men who bought that mine. The sins of the fathers pass onto the sons. That kind of thing. And it makes the descendants more vulnerable to guei attack.”
“The hungry ghosts will be able to do that?” Cordelia asked.
“Pak-lah said yes.”
“What happens to the descendants?” Oz asked.
“They’re evicted. Kind of dispossessed of their bodies.”
“So the guei will live again?”
“Not exactly. They’ll live in the descendants’ bodies, but they’ll be like puppets. Going through the motions, but Zhiyong will be pulling the strings.”
“Kinda like Stepford Wives,” Buffy said. “Only I guess it’ll be more like Stepford Kids or Stepford: Next Generation.”
“Why would Zhiyong want to do that?” Xander asked.
“Maybe you don’t look in the society and business pages,” Willow answered, “but most of those descendants control a lot of wealth and are in the big corporate circles. That gold mine was one of the few things their great-great-great-greats went bust on.”
“Zhiyong would control more money,” Giles said, “which would give him more power.”
“Especially here at the Hellmouth,” Willow said. “Since Zhiyong has no children, Sharmma’s chances of coming back to our world are limited. And if Zhiyong doesn’t bring Sharmma back to this world before he dies, the demon will have his soul to torture for a very long time.”
“Now there’s an incentive plan,” Xander commented.
Giles glanced at the clock, looking very tired. “Okay, I suggest we get on the road. Since Zhiyong is moving the timetable up with his two sacrifices, we no longer have till dawn. I’ll unlock the weapons closet.”
“Sharp things,” Buffy said semicheerily. “Head loppers. Remember, people, the heads do have to leave the body at all times to destroy them.”
As Willow watched them getting ready, she noticed the way Xander and Buffy stayed away from each other.
Oz stayed at her side for the moment. “Hey, it’ll be okay. They’ll work it out.”
“I hope so,” Willow whispered. “This group has been through a lot, but you know sooner or later something’s going to happen to bust us up.”
“No,” Oz said. “It’ll never happen. Not if we don’t let it.”
Only the hum of tires on pavement filled the Gilesmobile as it rocketed— almost —through the latest intersection against a red light. Luckily, it was almost three in the morning and not many people were out. They’re all home hiding, Buffy thought. They don’t know Zhiyong has most of the gang down at the junkyard working on his latest demon spell.
“Not a very lively rescue party, ar
e we?” Buffy asked. She sat in the backseat with Angel.
The Watcher glanced up in the rearview mirror as they raced through Sunnydale toward McCrory’s Salvage Yard. “Given the circumstances, no.”
“I guess I kinda blew it back at the library.”
“It was a tense situation,” Angel stated quietly. “That tends to bring out the worst in people. Especially when they’re working on the same goal and have different ideas on how to get there.”
“Xander certainly wasn’t a neutral party in the event,” Giles offered.
“I attacked his new girlfriend,” Buffy said. “Definitely no style points there.”
Giles cleared his throat. “His relationship toward Angel is sometimes a little less than tactful.”
“True. But that doesn’t make me feel any better.” Buffy glanced behind them, spotting Oz’s van following closely behind. Oz, Willow, Xander, and Shing rode in the van.
“He’ll be okay,” Angel said. “Just give him some time.”
“And once he finds out about Shing?”
Angel shrugged. “Then you can give him some more time.”
“I keep feeling like I should tell him, you know?”
“It’s there right in front of him,” Angel said. “He’s just not ready to see it.”
“He’s going to have a hard time dealing.”
Angel gazed at her. “We all do. I think part of it is meant to be that way.”
“Get through the bad parts and it makes all the good parts better? That kind of thing?”
“That’s the kind,” Angel said.
Buffy stared down the street, spotting the big McCrory’s billboard up ahead. The billboard showed a man bending over deeply under a raised car hood. The slogan read: NEED A PART? IF IT’S BEEN WRECKED, MCCRORY’S HAS THE PIECES!
Xander paused at the hurricane fence around the junkyard and looked up. “Now that’s going to be a long climb,” he whispered. He carried a double-bitted battleax over his shoulder as casually as if it were a Louisville slugger. “Do you see a ladder?” He looked up and down the fence, then realized a ladder being left outside the fence would have been just too much of an invitation.
