“Sure,” Cordelia agreed. “So you’ll be all right, then?”
“Maybe in the morning,” Jamie replied sadly. “For now, I’ll settle for asleep.”
“Can I use your phone?”
Moments later Jamie Anderson had shut the door to his bedroom and left Cordelia to use the phone and let herself out.
She dialed, then listened through four rings until a click indicated someone had picked up on the other end. A sleepy voice said, “Where are you, Cordelia?”
“Hey, Mom!” she said, with a levity she did not feel. “Willow and I just finished studying, and we’re totally brain-drained. I’m just gonna crash here, okay?”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and for a moment, Cordelia wondered if her mother had fallen back to sleep.
“Are you out with that Harris boy again?”
Cordelia could hear the disdain in her mother’s voice. As a rule, she didn’t lie, but she’d had to lie to her mother so much since Buffy and the others came into her life. Lies were stupid and hurtful, and Cordelia hated them. But this time she wished desperately that she had a lie to tell.
“No, Mom,” she said, fighting the tears that threatened to come again. “I’m not with Xander.”
“Do you promise?”
“I promise, Mom, yes. God!”
“This is the last time, Cordelia,” her mother said flatly, sounding quite awake now. “From now on, when you want to spend the night at a friend’s, I want to know beforehand. When you live on your own, you’ll have to live by your own standards, but as long as you live under our roof, your father and I make the rules.”
“Don’t I know it,” Cordelia said, with a venom she hardly felt. The conversation had been repeated so often, it was almost as though the lines simply had to be said.
“Don’t get smart with me, Cordelia,” her mother snapped.
“Sorry, Mom. I’ll be home early, okay?”
“You and Willow have fun, but don’t stay up too late. You need your beauty sleep,” her mother said.
Cordelia rolled her eyes at the phone.
“Don’t we all,” she said tersely. “’Night, Mom.”
“Good night, honey.”
* * *
Cordelia stumbled as she climbed in through Buffy’s bedroom window. It wasn’t as easy as the Slayer made it look. She’d have a bruise on her right knee in the morning, no question about that.
On her feet once more, Cordy started by going through Buffy’s closet. Buffy actually has a couple of decent outfits, Cordelia noted, surprised. But, ew, what is this on this sweater? Blood?
Cordelia made it a rule to throw out all the clothes monsters, demons, and other assorted creatures of the night had bled on, drooled on, or in other ways expired on. Bloodstains were next to impossible to get rid of, but let’s face it, there was no secret Martha Stewart remedy for any of the various slimey, oozy, gooey things that occasionally got sprayed on her.
Grimacing at the sweater, sparing a moment to wonder if Buffy’s knee boots would fit her, she moved to Buffy’s bureau. Socks, underwear, stockings, workout clothes. Lots of workout clothes. Knee pads. Shin guards. Ace bandages.
Ah.
In the lower left drawer she found what she was looking for.
Sort of.
There were a few stakes, two crosses, three plastic bottles of what she could only assume was holy water, and a pair of spiked brass knuckles Cordelia had never seen her use. She stared at the odd collection for a few moments before carefully removing the brass knuckles and a container of holy water not much bigger than a bottle of nail polish. That, she slipped into her pocket. The brass knuckles, she had no idea what to do with. She tried to fit them into the other front pocket on her pants, but they were too big, and
Cordelia ended up dropping the hunk of metal on the floor with a loud clank.
She cursed silently and picked them up, just holding on to them for the moment. Cordy glanced around Buffy’s room, trying to figure out where the girl kept her major weapons, particularly the crossbow. That was what Cordelia had come in looking for in the first place. Idly, she wondered if she should check the closet again.
The door opened.
“Buffy, I’ve told you that you don’t need to climb through the . . .” Joyce Summers began, then froze when she saw Cordelia standing in the middle of her daughter’s bedroom with a pair of brass knuckles in her hand. Buffy’s mom wore a bathrobe and carried a paperback book—some tawdry Hollywood romance by the look of the cover.
“Cordelia?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Summers,” Cordy said quickly. “I just . . . I didn’t want to wake you, and . . .”
Joyce’s expression changed from surprise to horror and despair, her features crumbling down until she looked almost disoriented.
“She’s in trouble, isn’t she?” Joyce asked, staring. “If she was . . . if she was dead, you’d have just come to the door. But she’s in trouble, right?”
Cordelia shook her head, moved over to put a hand on Mrs. Summers’s shoulder as the woman sat down on her daughter’s bed.
“No,” Cordelia said. “Or, at least, not that I know of. But Xander is in trouble and I don’t know where Buffy is and I can’t just let them . . . I can’t wait for her to show up.”
Relief washed over the woman’s face, followed by concern, and now it was Joyce’s turn to reach out for Cordelia. “Is there anything I can do?” she asked.
“I don’t know if there’s anything I can do,” Cordelia replied. “But I can’t not try.”
Joyce paused for several seconds, staring at nothing off in the corner of her daughter’s room. When she spoke, she didn’t even look up.
“It’s really as bad as she says, isn’t it?” Mrs. Summers asked. “Here, I mean. Sunnydale.”
“Yeah. It is.”
“Then why do we stay?” Joyce asked, looking puzzled and slightly overwhelmed. “Why does anyone stay? Why don’t you find a way to get your parents out of this place?”
Cordelia pondered that for a moment, but only a moment. In truth, it was a question she’d posed to herself many times.
“This is my home,” she answered. “Lame, I know. But I live here. I’m not letting some slimy hell-beast take that away from me. I’m not, like, a hero or something, but I’m not running away, either. Buffy’s different, though. You guys moved here, you could move away. Except that Buffy can’t. Her being the Chosen One and all.”
Joyce laughed bitterly. “I told Liz DeMarco I’d organize a big meeting at the school. Mobilize the adults. Oh, I’d never tell them, of course.” She pressed a shaky hand against her forehead. “It’s really ridiculous, isn’t it. Futile.”
Cordelia bit her lower lip to keep herself from speaking.
When Buffy’s mother stayed silent, Cordelia moved back toward the window.
“You can go out the front door, Cordelia,” Joyce Summers said.
Cordelia sighed and walked to the bedroom door.
“When you see her, tell her I love her, will you?”
“Sure,” Cordy said softly. “No problem.”
When she left, Joyce was still sitting on her daughter’s bed, staring at nothing.
Brian felt numb. He suspected it was from concentrating so fiercely on trying not to cry. He was too old to cry. The Hunt had returned, pounded into the clearing only moments ago, with captives aplenty and various and sundry wildlife they had killed on their ride. The clearing was drenched with the odors of sweat and fear, sulphur and smoke.
And blood.
They had opened his cage and put him to work instantly. From the back of a frothing, snorting black stallion—an unnatural thing nothing like a real horse—he had pulled the body of a small brown and white deer. As ordered, he cut it open and threw it on the ground near the edge of the clearing.
Of Treasure there was no sign, and he was terrified that they had killed her.
The hounds tore the dead deer to shreds, consuming each bi
t, even the bones, which were seared by the fire from their nostrils even as they ate.
The horses were fed as well, from supplies that seemed to have come from nowhere. Their feed was a revolting combination of rotting grain and some kind of bloody meat. His mind raced to his missing friend, and he closed his eyes and gagged.
Now he cleaned blood and gristle off an axe one of the Huntsmen had handed him. Human or animal, he didn’t know. Nor did he want to.
Brian heard shouting. He turned, scanned the clearing. One of the fires was out, but the other two provided enough illumination. That, and the glow from the opening at the other end of the clearing. And though it was an opening, it sure didn’t look like one. Instead of some kind of portal or door or gate, there was simply a bit of thick dark mist there. Already, he had seen corpses and prisoners trotted through that mist on foot or on horseback, carried or shepherded by a Huntsman. Only the Huntsmen ever returned.
Again he heard shouting. The new prisoners were struggling. Arguing. He was surprised that Hern had not executed them immediately. The Erl King had proven himself terribly impatient.
Then, through the thickening crowd, past the stamping horses, a huge black buck moved out of the way and Brian could see the face of the prisoner who was creating the disturbance.
“Oh, no,” he whispered to himself.
Brian felt the weight of the axe in his hands and hefted it, glanced at it, then began walking toward the Huntsmen and their captives. His rage grew, his fear grew, and his despair grew until he began to raise the huge war blade over his head.
A strong hand landed on his shoulder, spun him around hard enough to knock the axe from his hand. It clipped his forehead, slicing into his scalp, as it went down.
“Shock, what are you doing?” Treasure demanded.
She was visibly changed. He stared at her, at the loose linen shirt and brown stitched leather pants that had replaced her old clothes. At the blaze in her eyes, and the way she stood tall. At the flecks of blood that dotted her right cheek and forehead.
“Treasure?” he asked. “Connie?”
“Don’t call me that,” she said angrily. “And leave the prisoners alone. I want to keep you alive, Shock. You’re my friend. I still care about that. But you have to be useful to stay alive around here. And you have to keep your mouth shut.”
Brian glanced once in the direction where he’d seen the librarian dude, Mr. Giles. Then he turned away, and went back to work. He paid no attention to the small trickles of blood rolling like tears down the side of his face.
He didn’t want to attract attention.
Some of the prisoners were screaming. Some were crying. Many were unconscious. Bleeding. Dying. Wispy things moved just out of sight, caught in peripheral vision a moment before moving on. Ghosts. Spirits. Suicides and worse.
All were being herded toward the thick, dark mist that roiled in and about itself at one end of the clearing. All but a small group who stood off to one side, aimlessly staring at nothing, like patients at an asylum.
They look as though they’ve already given up all hope of escape, Willow thought. Or, as if it had never occurred to them. Several of them were being moved into a wicker cage, and did not protest at all.
“Move along, now,” Hern the Hunter roared. “Take the prisoners to the Lodge and return straight away. There is still work to be done this night. Vengeance to be had.”
“Kingdoms to save and women to love,” Xander whispered halfheartedly, rubbing a sizable knot on his forehead.
Willow knew she was meant to laugh, or at least smile, but she couldn’t do either. Xander was trying to be funny, but Willow knew that he felt the terror just as strongly as she did—a profound, irrational fear that had swept over them in the van and caused her to sweat and sob as they were carried here to the woods. Something about the Hunt caused it, and not merely the horror at being captured by such creatures. There was something about them, a fear pheromone or something.
It hadn’t worn off, but logic could beat it. Sort of. If she could break it down, study the biological reaction, understand what was happening, well . . . the fear wouldn’t go away, but she could put it aside enough to focus on what was happening.
The pain helped, too.
She’d been hit in the side several times, and was finding it hard to breathe now. She wondered if they’d broken some of her ribs.
At her side Giles trudged with his head high, eyes darting around, studying the Huntsmen and their animals. It was amazing to Willow that his glasses hadn’t been broken or lost. Just luck, she guessed.
Then she did smile, wanly, to herself. Some luck.
They all had their hands bound behind their backs with rope. They were herded like cattle, Huntsmen around them with sharp implements of all sorts. Herded toward that mist. Willow didn’t understand much about what was going on, but she knew one thing with absolute certainty: she did not want to see the Lodge of the Wild Hunt.
“Giles, we’ve got to do something,” she whispered.
The Erl King continued to snap and bray his orders and all throughout the camp, they were obeyed instantly.
“What can we do, Will?” Xander rasped, his voice low. “I mean, except for waiting for a chance to make a break for it.”
“We can’t do that, either, Xander,” Giles said. “We’ve got to help these other people as well.”
Xander felt like laughing. More than laughing, actually. He felt as though this insane giggle that was building in his gut and in his brain would bubble up and overflow right out of his mouth. His eyes were wide as he glanced around, and he bit his lip to keep the giggle in. If he could keep that laugh down, maybe he wouldn’t be so scared, he thought.
And he was scared. No question. The woods just weren’t normal. They’d all noticed it, he was sure, but even Giles hadn’t said anything about it. The trees were almost leering at them, bent over the path they had followed into this clearing as if they might begin to speak, to move, at any time. Something huge and white had roared off in the forest as they passed, and two Huntsmen had gone off in search of it, but come back empty-handed.
But it wasn’t just the trees and it wasn’t the weird creatures that roamed all around. Now that they were back at the encampment, the darkness that ebbed and flowed in the trees had receded a bit. The hounds no longer bayed and the horses snorted only from time to time. Only their hooves, soft on a bed of dirt and twigs and stone, made any noise at all.
The silence was worse than the clamor of the Hunt. With the horn and the hounds and the hooves pound ing, he had been able to look at them as physical enemies. Somebody he could punch.
Tough guy. What a joke.
In the relative silence now, he looked around and saw the reality. They weren’t simple physical things he could fight. The beasts were dead, or they had been dead before something brought them back. And not any vampire, either. This was a whole other kind of living death. Some of the Huntsmen were like that as well. Others were elves or something, but not any kind of nice, sweet, bright, pointy-eared elves like the ones in the fantasy novels he’d read in junior high.
Xander allowed himself to admit, in spite of his fear or perhaps because of it, that whatever this place was, it wasn’t really the forest at the edge of Route 17. Oh, it occupied the same space. The clearing was there, but . . . somehow it had all been changed or merged with whatever primeval forest the Wild Hunt made their camp in.
Already, Xander felt as if he was gone from home. Gone from the world he’d known. They were being marched toward the dark, swirling, oily mist at the other end of the clearing, and he knew, as his heart raced with jackhammer terror, that once they passed through that mist, they would truly be gone. He’d never see home again.
To Xander’s intense amazement, he realized how badly he wanted to see his home again. His room. X-Men poster on the wall, swim team photo in a drawer somewhere. Dirty socks next to the bed and an array of only slightly preworn clothes scattered about, ready to be worn
again.
Home.
Even Mom and Dad. If he had the opportunity to eat cold shrimp fried rice from a small white carton at three in the morning with his mother again, Xander promised himself he would take it. He might not have the most caring parents in the world, but they were all he had.
He missed them.
He didn’t want to die.
A group of Huntsmen were still astride black horses, and they rode alongside the line of prisoners like cattle rustlers. The Erl King followed behind them, overseeing everything that happened in the camp. They had all noted how hairy he was, almost like a huge bear walking like a man. Willow stared at the horns that jutted from his head. There had been some debate over whether they were part of his helmet or came right out of his skull. Willow was convinced they were all natural.
Like the devil’s.
The Erl King turned to ride back to the center of camp, eyes blazing. Willow figured it was now or never. She turned, about to step into his path, but Giles nudged her back. Instead, the Watcher turned to the huge beast man on his black horse and stared at him in open disdain.
“King of the Elves and Lord of the Wild Hunt, Horned Man and Hunter, know me and my name,” Giles shouted.
The Erl King drew his horse to a stop. It snorted flames down at Giles, but the Watcher did not turn away.
“You are Hern,” Giles said. “My name is Rupert Giles. I am the Watcher, and you are not my liege. I defy you.”
From his hip, Hern the Hunter slowly drew a long ebony blade.
“How dare you?” he drawled angrily, voice and hand quaking with his rage.
Willow had no idea what Giles was doing. Had no idea if even he knew what he was doing and was terrified that he was going to get them all eviscerated immediately, but she had demanded that he do something, and here it was. She had to back him up.
“My name is Willow Rosenberg, and you are not my liege!” Willow yelled. “I defy you!”
She glanced at Xander quickly. His eyes darted from her to Giles and back again, and he looked like he might throw up. But he stepped forward.
CHILD of the HUNT Page 19
