CHILD of the HUNT

by Christopher Golden

  Magic users first, she thought.

  She ran at a woman to her left. From behind her, a man whose hair was blazing orange fire and whose hands were smoldering, with blue smoke billowing from his pores, came after her. His hands were raised, and Buffy smelled something awful, and realized she definitely did not want him touching her under any circumstances.

  The woman straight ahead had a lavender glow in her eyes, and Buffy was ready to attack, prepared to duck whatever she might try. But the man with the blue, smoking hands was coming too close.

  Buffy stopped short, spun, cocked back her arm, and let the broken pole fly from her hand in a perfect trajectory at the throat of the warlock with smoking hands. Only when the wooden shaft hit, and the man’s eyes went wide, did Buffy recognize him as the thirsty man in the stocks whom she had tried to help. The man reached for his own throat, trying to understand how she had crushed his windpipe.

  Whatever poisonous magic seeped from his own hands killed him instantly.

  As the others looked on in horror, Buffy rushed suddenly back toward the woman with lavender eyes. She leaped, spun in the air, and kicked her in the side of the head hard enough to knock her unconscious. Then she had a clear field, or at least, an open path to the food stalls where she’d hidden out before. Buffy started to sprint, but her path was blocked suddenly by the old crone from whom Cordelia had bought her dress.

  Except she wasn’t quite human anymore. The old woman’s skin was scaly and had a green hue. A forked tongue darted from her mouth and her fangs glistened with venom. One of her eyes remained the color of sour milk. The other, good eye was slitted like a lizard’s.

  “All is not what it seems, girl,” she hissed.

  “Nothing is what it seems, Granny,” Buffy snapped.

  She had to stay away from those venomous fangs, she knew. Buffy dove forward into a handspring, let her momentum carry her almost over, then used her upper body strength to drive both feet up into the snake woman’s gut hard enough to pop some ribs.

  Then she froze, focused, dropped to a crouch and leaped straight up to land on the roof of the nearest of the food stalls.

  Already they were moving in around her. She chanced a glance around, trying to spot Roland again. Incredibly, he was still standing by King Richard, tethered by a thin line, almost like a leash. The sight enraged her further. Buffy had been holding back, unsure what she was dealing with. It would be so much easier if they were just monsters, but she was pretty sure that at least most of them had been human once upon a time.

  “Enough!” King Richard bellowed. “I’ll kill her myself.”

  Now it was the obese ruler’s turn to begin burning like a candle. A white light, tainted with a blood red, began to radiate from his chest as if he had a little bit of the sun there, coated with his own viscera. King Richard started to chant, and the light grew brighter.

  Buffy kicked a serving wench in the head as the woman tried to climb onto the food stall’s roof.

  Richard chanted louder.

  Then he cried out in pain.

  Buffy narrowed her eyes, looking into the glare from the dimming glow of Richard’s chest as the warlock stumbled. There, behind him, was Angel. He looked like hell, very ragged, and very pissed off.

  Angel held a long aluminum baseball bat in both hands, and swung again at King Richard’s back. The bat connected with a crack and the leader of this coven—or whatever it was—went down on his knees. Angel gave him a solid backhand to the side of his head. Richard went down on his belly, unconscious.

  “Buffy!” Roland cried out in fear, shying away from Angel.

  “He’s a friend,” Buffy confirmed, even as Angel snapped the leash that had been around Roland’s neck.

  A pair of serving wenches and three brawny men were on Angel almost instantly. But these were merely human, no magic there, and the vampire was more than strong enough to throw them off.

  Buffy dropped down from the food stalls and whipped a roundhouse kick into the jaw of the man who’d sold them the tickets to the Faire. Then she scanned the grounds quickly. If she’d counted right, there was still someone conscious who was a magic user. Witch or warlock, she couldn’t recall, and so she looked for anything that glowed. Anything at all, out of the ordinary.

  There was a soft laugh, and Buffy spun to see the woman behind her. She lifted her hand and tiny sprigs of lightning seemed to web between her fingers and spread out from there, reaching for Buffy. Reaching for—

  The woman began to scream and beat at her clothing. Buffy blinked and looked more closely. The ground around the witch was crawling with dark faerie. They swarmed over her, biting and clawing her until she fell under the sheer number of them. The onslaught was horrible.

  “Angel!” Buffy shouted. “Take Roland and get out of here!”

  She turned to run, batting at a pair of dark faerie who tried to latch onto her clothes. With the flickering light from the stage area behind, and the dim moonlight above, Buffy could see the members of the Faire troupe flailing at the creatures that tore into their flesh, going for their throats and other tender parts.

  Buffy froze. She couldn’t see Angel at all.

  On the ground not far from her was an undulating mass of dark faerie. Their laughter was a cacophony that chilled the soul, and Buffy shivered. Then the mass rose, almost erupting from the ground, and she saw that it was Angel. He was almost completely covered with the creatures.

  Somebody called her name, and Buffy turned to see that Roland had somehow been bound, and even now the faerie were carting him away. It must have taken dozens of them just to hold him up, but Roland was bound well. He wasn’t going to escape without help.

  But then there was Angel.

  Buffy cursed loudly and began ripping the vicious little creatures off Angel, leaving small wounds and splashes of blood behind. She heard a bellow of rage behind her, and turned to see that King Richard had risen to his feet once more, covered in dark faerie. The bloody white light from his chest—heart magic, Buffy thought suddenly—burned at least a dozen of them to nothing but cinder and ash.

  Sensing that threat, the faerie swarming over Angel began to withdraw, some attacking Richard, others running for the safety of the fence and the trees beyond.

  “Are you all right?” Buffy asked Angel, staring at him intently.

  “Not even close,” he said, teeth gritted in pain. “But I will be. Meantime, we’d better catch up with your friend.”

  They started off after the dark faerie and Roland as fast as Angel could move.

  Chapter 11

  VIENNA WAS ONLY A LITTLE DRUNK WHEN SHE WALKED out of the Bronze. Bruno was on the door tonight, and she stumbled over to plant a wet and very deep kiss on his mouth. He shook his head and laughed when she was done.

  “You’re crazy, girl,” he said. “Go home.”

  “I hate going home alone,” Vienna replied, batting her lashes at him.

  “Stick around an hour and I’ll walk you,” Bruno offered.

  Vienna smiled, shrugged. Bruno was a nice guy. He was a little older than she was, but who was she kidding. At twenty-two, Vienna was over the hill compared to most of the girls at the Bronze. And her whole goth thing was very much over. Still, she liked the look. The straight black Morticia Addams hair, pale skin and bright red lipstick suited her. Plenty of guys had thought so, too.

  Bruno thought so. She could see it in his eyes.

  “You know where I live?” she asked him.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll be up if you want to come by, Bruno. That’d be nice,” she said, and touched him on the arm lightly. He really was a nice guy.

  Vienna pushed past him, walked off with long strides that showed off her long pale legs under the too-short skirt. She didn’t look back, but she knew Bruno was watching. Vienna smiled to herself. Tomorrow, she thought, I’ll start the job search again.

  After she made Bruno breakfast.

  “Evening, little lady.”

 
In the shadows beyond the dumpster, a gaunt old man leered at her. She ignored him, keeping her eyes straight ahead and walking a little faster. Homeless old pervo, she thought.

  Then something clicked in her head, and she realized that she’d recognized him. It was Old Man Sayre. He lived just a few doors down from her grandmother. She almost stopped, wondering if something was wrong with him, but then her self-preservation instinct kicked in. If he was whispering to girls a quarter his age—okay, maybe a third—from shadowy corners . . . well he might not be homeless, but he was still probably an old pervo.

  Vienna rolled her eyes. Was she going to have a story to tell Gramma. She chuckled softly.

  A powerful hand clamped down on her shoulder tightly enough to crack bone.

  “Dammit! Let go of me!” Vienna shouted, and turned, fingers bent into claws, to tear into her attacker’s face. But Old Man Sayre’s face had changed. His yellow eyes glowed, and his teeth . . .

  The better to eat you with my dear.

  Vienna screamed.

  Old Man Sayre grabbed her by the hair and stared into her eyes as he moved his mouth down toward her neck. Then she saw only the white hair on his head, and felt teeth sharp as needles punching through the flesh of her throat.

  Her legs went weak, but Old Man Sayre held her up. Sucked on her.

  Bruno was shouting her name, his voice coming closer.

  At first she thought the thundering, the rhythmic pounding, was his boots on the pavement. She was losing blood, her mind growing fuzzy and dim, but the sound wasn’t just footsteps. It was more like an old-time train pumping along at full speed, like in the old westerns.

  Westerns.

  Not a train, then. Horses.

  Old Man Sayre dropped her to the ground. She heard Bruno shouting at him, telling him to back off, asking her if she was okay. The thing that used to be Old Man Sayre told Bruno he was going to die for interfering with dinner.

  Vienna wanted to cry, but she couldn’t. And her head hurt from all the pounding. Didn’t they hear the horses?

  Bruno said, “Ohmigod,” real quiet.

  Old Man Sayre started to whimper like a frightened animal.

  Vienna had just started to get up, still disoriented, and she looked up to see the terror on the old man’s misshapen face. The fanged mouth made a huge O, and then a thick shaft of wood with feathers on one end—an arrow, impossible as it was—punched through Old Man Sayre’s chest.

  She watched him explode in a cloud of dust, and the arrow clattered to the ground. A wave of nausea swept over her, and Vienna fell to her knees again.

  By the time she was able to stand and turn around, the sound of the horses had moved on, far down the street.

  Bruno was gone.

  Vienna stumbled back to the Bronze and waited while someone called an ambulance. She had a horrible feeling she was never going to see Bruno again.

  It was the last time she ever went to the Bronze.

  Most of Sunnydale was already asleep when the Hunt rode through the center of town. Hooves thundered and spectral flames burned. The hounds bayed. The Erl King roared his supremacy, and sang the song of the hopeless. And the hopeless came to him.

  He was pleased.

  Some of them would become Huntsmen. Few of those would last until the next hunt. He would kill them himself if they displeased him, or send them back to the Lodge with the others they’d collected, the suicides and the unloved children whose souls he’d stolen. And the ones foolish enough to dare to look upon the Wild Hunt, instead of showing the proper respect. All those would go, this very night, to the Lodge, where they would forever remain, to suffer eternal despair and misery.

  But the hopeless, they were given a chance. Hunt or serve. Or die.

  Hooves pounded pavement. The stench of sulphur spread from street to street. The dark faerie gabbled and the horses snorted. And the Hunters rode as if eternity had no meaning and held no fear for them.

  Though the hunting in this place was excellent, most of the townspeople survived the night. Perhaps they turned over in their sleep and groaned. Perhaps they dreamed of shapes passing by their windows and galloping on their roofs. Perhaps in the morning, they felt exhausted and anxious. But more than anyplace the Hunt had ever visited, the people of Sunnydale paid little attention to the Hunt. As if, in some unconscious way, they understood what was out there on the streets. As if they knew they were better off keeping their doors locked and their eyes closed.

  Better for them. Most of them would still be alive in the morning.

  Still, though the Hunting was thin, the resident vampires proved great sport, and a handful of the Huntsmen diverted themselves for several hours by running many to ground and destroying them. That’s all it was, however. Sport.

  Once, long ago, a human girl had told the Erl King the true nature of vampires. They didn’t belong to any world, not this one nor the world beyond where the Wild Hunt traveled eternally. The undead were soulless, and as such, abominations in the eyes of the Erl King and his Huntsmen. When they were found, they were killed as a matter of course.

  As the Wild Hunt rode, the Erl King went to the new girl, Treasure, and offered her his hunting horn. She placed it to her lips, and trumpeted her new life with every bit of breath she could muster.

  The King thought that this Treasure might survive the night. The more he watched her, the more he began to wonder if he might not make even greater use of her.

  “Giles.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Giles.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Buffy is on a runaway train barreling headlong toward a horrible, fiery demise. While, given the choice, I wouldn’t want to trade places with her, I’d really like to help her get off the train. And as opposed to sitting here in the library being as useful as a confessional in Congress, it’d be a toss up, honestly. Fiery demise. Watching Giles read. Definite coin toss. And you’re not listening to a word I’m saying.”

  Without warning, Xander began to sing. Loudly and badly. The theme from Friends. It was apparently the most annoying song he could think of on the spur of the moment.

  “Xander?” Giles asked, horrified. “What is . . . did you say something about a train?”

  The Watcher was saved Xander’s reply by Oz and Willow, who pushed hurriedly through the library doors. Giles looked up and instantly noted the frustration on their faces. And for the first time since Giles had met Oz, the young man seemed positively galvanized. Face flushed to match his hair—which was reddish orange this month—he held Willow’s hand tightly, fingers laced through hers, as if he might never let her go.

  “No luck with Angel?” Giles asked.

  “Luck. Sort of,” Oz replied.

  “We found Angel . . . and a hundred and one ugly little green guys who tried to eat us. And him,” Willow said breathily, eyes darting around with a realistic paranoia about her surroundings they had all become familiar with, and fallen victim to at one time or another. She paused, tilted her head slightly, and added, “We got away.”

  “Indeed,” Giles said.

  “And the part where you found Angel?” Xander asked.

  “When we told him where Buffy went, he had us stop the van and just took off,” Willow said. “Without, y’know, bothering to tell us anything useful.”

  “We’re wondering if he figured out some connection between those little faerie guys and the people at King Richard’s,” Oz suggested. “Buffy was on that riff. When we told him so, he booked big-time.”

  “In case anyone wanted to know, my brain is a mass of melted gray slag,” Xander volunteered. “I still don’t have any idea where there’s a connection between the hungry critters, the crazy Faire people, the dirt boy, this Wild Hunt thing, and well, anything.”

  “Well, we do live on . . .” Willow began.

  “Okay, just stop now, Will,” Xander snapped. “The old we-live-on-the-Hellmouth excuse is handy, but sometimes it just isn’t enough, you know?”

  “Wit
ness me stopping with the handy dandy excuse,” Willow said, without much self-recrimination, then looked at Giles. “Have you heard from Buffy?”

  “I called and spoke to her mother,” Giles said. “It seems Buffy’s new friend, Roland, was forcibly taken from her home. One would assume by the actors from the Faire who had mistreated him.”

  “Actors,” Xander sniffed.

  “So Angel’s on a wild Buffy chase?” Oz asked.

  “He’s always been rather successful at tracking her in the past,” Giles said. “We’ve had to assume that Buffy would have gone after Roland and were merely waiting for the rest of you to return before deciding upon a course of action. I daresay I’m relieved to know that Angel is likely to be with her, but we should move along now and try to catch up with them. We’ll take my car,” Giles added.

  “Really, no,” Xander said.

  “Why doesn’t Oz drive?” Willow suggested simultaneously.

  Giles sighed.

  In the van Willow glanced at Giles. “So,” she said, “have you come up with anything we can use?”

  Giles raised his eyebrows and removed his glasses. “In fact, I’ve learned a great deal these past few hours. This isn’t the first time a Slayer has crossed paths with the Wild Hunt. It’s happened several times, most recently in 1865, with a girl named Lucy Hanover. According to the journal of her Watcher, Miss Hanover spent several nights slaughtering many of the dark faerie before the Hunt itself rode through the small town in Virginia where she was living at that time. It lasted only a single night. Deaths and disappearances in the town that night were nearly as high as for the entire rest of the year.”

  “Which doesn’t add much at all to what we already knew,” Xander said, as he and Willow bounced around in the back of the van.

  “But it only lasted one night,” Oz pointed out. “So we’re in the clear, right?”

  “It’s possible, but I doubt it,” Giles replied. “Not if you were all attacked again tonight.”