“My name is Alexander Harris, and you are not my liege!” Xander said, his voice uncertain. But then his eyes narrowed and he raised his voice louder. “I defy you!”
The Erl King began to laugh, loud and deep and long. His laugh was cruel, and when he stopped, it was with a suddenness that Willow took to mean he had not truly been amused at all. Fire snorted from his nostrils, just as it did from the horses’ and hounds’, and Willow knew for certain then that he had never really been human.
“Feed them to the hounds,” the Erl King said.
“Oh, dear,” Giles muttered.
Whatever he’d hoped would happen obviously hadn’t panned out. But now that they had the Erl King’s attention, there was no way Willow was going to let it go at that.
The hounds began to bark and howl and run across the clearing, several of them snuffling the ground as if their prey had to be tracked. Long rivulets of saliva fell from their hanging tongues. Willow shivered as she saw that their paws did not throw dirt up from the ground. Their paws did not even touch the ground, but floated spectrally above the soil.
“Run!” Xander yelled.
Willow intercepted him, forcing him to stand his ground, and looked up at the Erl King. Her refusal to flee had gotten her noticed. The King stared down at her.
“Lucy Hanover sends her best,” Willow said in a low, even voice.
In the blazing, pupil-less eyes of the Lord of the Wild Hunt, Willow saw surprise. For a moment, the face seemed to soften.
Willow prayed.
The forest seemed different, somehow. Buffy couldn’t quite put her finger on it, and she hadn’t ever really explored the woods here, but the whole place seemed somehow more . . . wild than she’d expected. The floor of the perimeter was littered with tangled roots and brambles that seemed to grab hold of her as she walked past. They hadn’t really even entered yet. Instead, they were walking around the outer edges, trying to find or glimpse something even remotely resembling a path.
It smelled different. Forests generally had many smells—pungent, moist earth; growing things; and yes, a few dying things, but this was something that, when she inhaled it, warned her to stay away. It was a primitive, atavistic reaction, one she had to fight to ignore.
There was also the issue of the darkness. Just beyond the first line of trees, the darkness in the forest looked different. More textured, somehow, as if it floated there through some illusion. As though it had been placed there with purpose.
She shivered and tried not to think about it.
“They had to have had a path in order to carry Roland through this tangle,” Oz said, his concern for Willow plain in every word.
A moment later Angel pointed. “Here.”
They joined him twenty yards ahead, and Buffy saw instantly what he was talking about. Not only were the trees much less crowded here, but there were signs that something had been dragged or carried over the ground there not long before. A little army of dark faerie would do the trick.
“Stay together,” Buffy said.
And they went in.
Less than twenty feet into the forest, the trees thinned and an actual path presented itself. It wasn’t well trodden, but it was open and obvious enough to indicate that it led somewhere.
“Now we’re getting some place,” Angel said quietly.
Buffy blinked in surprise. His voice had a familiar and quite discomforting growl to it, and she looked over to see that his face had changed. Yellow eyes blazed and fangs gleamed: the vampire was ascendant.
“What?” he asked. But he saw the look in her eyes. Angel reached up to run the fingers of his right hand over his features. He looked puzzled. Clearly he hadn’t brought the change on himself. That worried Buffy.
“I don’t get it,” he said.
“Something about this place,” she replied. “There’s magic here. I can almost sense it. It’s leaking all through the forest, like radiation out of a nuclear accident.”
“Welcome to the supernatural Chernobyl, kids,” Oz said quietly and without humor.
They walked on another thirty yards or so. Things moved in the woods, and several times Buffy thought she saw shapes moving deep in the forest. A tall white creature far off moved in a rolling apelike gait through the green. They heard the thump of hooves once, but it was nothing like the Hunt and it moved away quickly.
Buffy thought she heard a flute.
Then Oz grunted in pain and doubled over, holding on to his stomach as though he’d been shot in the gut. She called his name, and Angel knelt down beside him.
“What is it?” the vampire asked.
“I . . . don’t know,” Oz stammered. “But I think I’m . . . okay . . . I’m okay now.”
When he stood up, Oz looked even angrier than before. His face seemed to be curled into a snarl, and Buffy wasn’t sure she liked that at all. She kept an eye on him as they walked, but a few yards farther up the path, Oz stopped and pointed into the woods.
“This way,” he said. “They took Roland this way.”
“How can you tell?” she asked.
“I can smell them.”
Buffy’s heart leaped, but she didn’t question. Instead, they followed Oz as he forged his way through the thick undergrowth. After a short time he knelt and sniffed the ground.
“They’re close,” Oz growled.
“Do you think they know we’re following them?” Angel asked quietly. He looked at Buffy, and then at Oz. She shook her head. She didn’t know what was up with Oz either.
“Maybe they don’t care,” Oz replied.
Buffy felt a small drop on her cheek and wiped it away. She glanced up, trying to see the clouds through the branches, and her eyes widened.
“Uh, guys?” she whispered. “They care.”
The dark faerie began raining down on them from the trees.
Oz tore into them. He could never remember moving this fast, but then, he’d never been so frightened for another person before. He loved Willow, and he wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of his getting her back. Especially not these annoying little critters.
Angel tore off into the woods, bashing himself against one tree after another, scraping them off his body. Stamping them beneath his feet. After a moment, Oz couldn’t see him anymore.
Buffy was in trouble. They were tangled in her hair, beating and slashing at her with talons. Oz tore as many of them off of her as he could, but then she was on her own. He had his own troubles. But Oz knew how to deal with these things.
He ignored the ones that were on him. Ignored the pain, focused away from it. Instead, he started to hunt them. He pulled them from the trees and stomped them on the ground. He chased after several, and a number of them fell away from him as he ran.
Some of them screamed as he chased them. They were frightened of him. Good. That was how he would beat them. Terrify the nasty little cowards. Oz chased them farther and farther into the woods. From somewhere far off, he heard a high pitched whistle, and all at once, the dark faerie retreated in a single effort, moving up into the trees and across the forest floor and heading north through the forest. They were a horrible sight, a tiny army of screaming and laughing green goblins scurrying over roots and underbrush—and all Oz could think of was a pack of rats swarming through a sewer.
Oz grabbed one last faerie in his fist, and pulped it with a squeeze.
Then they were gone.
He laughed, and the laugh came out as a choking snarl. He felt the sharpness of his teeth against his lips. Questioned the glee with which he had killed the things, and the ease of it as well.
Saw the fur on the back of his hands.
It wasn’t the full moon. Not for a week. Yet somehow, Oz had begun to change. Begun, and stopped, somewhere between human and werewolf.
He opened his mouth and tried to tell himself that it was impossible.
What came out was a howl.
Chapter 13
AS THE SNARLING HOUNDS BORE DOWN ON THEM, Xande
r turned to run. He tugged as hard as he could at his bonds, and the rope cut into his wrists. But if he couldn’t get his hands free enough to climb a tree or grab a stick to defend himself—or something—he didn’t stand a chance of saving himself. Never mind Willow and Giles.
Speaking of whom, Xander couldn’t help but notice that they weren’t keeping up with him. He risked a quick glance over his shoulder.
He caught his foot on an exposed tree root and went down hard on the packed earth of the clearing, a stone scratching his cheek and soil sliding up his left nostril.
The hounds moved in.
Xander closed his eyes. Their searing breath burned the skin on the back of his neck. Their stench was unbelievable. He heard the clack of their fangs and then—
“Wait!” the Erl King roared. “Away the hounds!”
Xander opened his eyes in shock, wondering why he wasn’t dead. Reluctantly, at the Erl King’s command, the ghost dogs crept back toward the fire on the other side of the clearing. Xander rolled and awkwardly got to his feet.
Giles and Willow drifted toward him, and he toward them, until the three were more or less a unit again. The Erl King held the reins of his fire-breathing stallion and the beast carried him toward them. The king stopped just in front of them, and then he lowered his sword so that its tip was not far from Willow’s right eye.
“What do you know of Lucy Hanover?” Hern the Hunter asked.
Willow seemed surprised and opened her mouth to respond.
“Don’t tell him anything, Will!” Xander snapped.
Giles cleared his throat, but Xander shot him a look that he hoped said, Trust me, I know what I’m doing. In reality, of course, he had no idea what he was doing, but he did have a hunch. The Erl King would kill them, no doubt. And Xander had no idea where Willow had come up with that Lucy Hanover line, just grasping at straws same as he was, he figured. But it had bought them a few minutes of life.
Xander hoped he could buy some more.
“Still your tongue, whelp,” the Erl King sneered, eyes burning as he leaned out of the saddle a bit. “Or I’ll fry it for my dinner with . . .”
“Yeah, I know, some fava beans and a nice Chianti,” Xander said, his voice sounding a bit crazed, even to him.
Good. Maybe the king would think he was com pletely nuts and have pity on him. Maybe, but not freakin’ likely.
The king slipped from his horse with the sound of leather on leather, and landed heavily on the ground. He was huge. Over seven feet tall, not counting the horns. Around his eyes, one of the few places where the thick fur did not grow, the Hunter’s skin was oily black and raw as a wound. Xander thought there was blood on his horns. Then he didn’t want to look anymore.
“What do you know of Lucy Hanover?” the Erl King demanded once more. “Speak, now, or you will die.”
Xander swallowed, hesitated. But only for a moment.
“Go on, then, kill us!” he said, and then he did something that took every ounce of control he had over his own body: he stepped toward the Erl King.
“Xander!” Giles hissed.
Willow glanced at him, eyes wide with terror. He couldn’t hear the whimper in her throat over the pounding of his heart, but he knew that it was there.
The Erl King swung his sword toward Xander. Flame blew from the man-beast’s nostrils and he lifted the blade into the air.
“You were gonna kill us anyway,” Xander said hurriedly. “What difference does it make? We’ve got a message for you from Lucy Hanover, big fella. You want it, you’ve got to let us go.”
The sword wavered in the air. The Erl King growled, “Lucy Hanover has been dead for a century.”
“I know plenty of dead people,” Xander said dismissively. “What, you never talk to dead people?”
Giles and Willow stared at him as though he were insane. Xander shrugged, still smirking arrogantly. Whatever worked.
“If your words please me, I will let you live,” said the Erl King.
“I don’t think so, Hernie.” Xander shook his head and rolled his eyes, and reminded himself not to push it. “Whatever honor is worth to you, we need your word that you’ll free us. In fact, I think you better let my friends go right now, and I’ll give you the message myself.”
The Erl King began to laugh, and then Xander knew he had pushed it too far. Asked for too much, and in doing so, as well as admitted he was bluffing.
“Fine,” he said, scrambling for something, anything, to distract the Lord of the Hunt. “I guess you don’t want her back, then.”
Hern the Hunter stopped laughing. Xander blinked. It was the reaction he was hoping for, but he sensed something he hadn’t expected at all. The King wanted the long dead Lucy Hanover back, but not because she had escaped from him. It was obvious that he wanted her back because, somehow, incredibly, he missed her.
As the huge creature stared down at Xander, silence blanketed the clearing. Then, suddenly, it was broken by a murmur and the loud cackling of a hundred tiny voices. The Erl King turned, glanced across the clearing, then seemed to rise up and stand even taller, if that were possible.
“Ah,” he said, “Roland is returned. We shall let him decide.”
“Thank God,” Xander whispered, allowing himself to relax the tiniest bit.
“But, why Roland—” Giles began, then realized he was revealing his own ignorance. He clamped his mouth shut.
It was too late. The Watcher had managed to get the Erl King’s attention again. The king looked at them, narrowed his eyes, and laughed.
“You know nothing,” he said in a snarl. “But I will tell you because it pleases me to speak of my son.” He leaned foward over the saddle of his mount and regarded each of them in turn.
“Though she could never have borne him in the natural way, the Slayer gave up part of her essence, her soul, what makes her human, so that Roland could be born.”
They watched as Roland shook free of the dark faerie and, staring petulantly at the ground, walked toward the Erl King without any fear.
“In every way that matters,” the king said quietly, “Lucy Hanover was Roland’s mother.”
The sad-looking boy stopped in front of the Erl King. He glanced at Willow and Xander and Giles, nodded to acknowledge that he had recognized them, and looked up at Hern briefly before turning his eyes down once more.
“If you run away again, I shall kill you,” the Erl King warned grimly.
Roland glared at him.
“Yes, Father.”
Ira Rosenberg missed Johnny Carson. All these other late-night faces seemed like hucksters to him. Johnny had been like a friend of the family. When he’d laughed, you knew it was real. Now there was nothing like that on TV, particularly late at night. Though he hated the smut, Ira had gotten cable just so he’d have something to watch on the nights when he couldn’t sleep. Reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show were a particular favorite. That Morey Amsterdam got him laughing every time.
“Ira?”
He turned in his La-Z-Boy to see that his wife had come in, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She pulled her robe tight around herself.
“Willow still hasn’t come in?”
“Not yet, dear,” Ira said. “Didn’t she say she was going to be studying late at Buffy’s?”
“That’s what she said,” Mrs. Rosenberg confirmed, then clucked her tongue as she sat on the arm of the La-Z-Boy. “It isn’t that I don’t trust her, Ira. She’s a good girl. But with this Oz, and those crucifixes a while ago . . . and after all the trouble the Summers girl has been in, I just worry. She used to talk to me.”
Ira patted his wife’s hand. “Willow’s a good girl, sweetheart,” he said. “She’s just growing up. She’s almost an adult now. When she goes away to college, we won’t be able to watch out for her anymore. She’ll have to make these choices for herself.”
She sighed. “Maybe we’ve come down too hard on her lately. Her first boyfriend, a musician.” She gave him a look. “Maybe she’s rebelling.”
He paused, looked into the eyes of his wife. “I was hard on that boy. Fathers are supposed to be.”
“Yes.” She sighed. “But it seems like it’s all gone by so fast.”
He nodded. “I miss it too. The way she depended on us. The way her eyes lit up when I came home from work. But that’s what happens. Kids grow up. Their eyes don’t get quite as bright. They start to question whether or not their parents are actually the wisest people in the world.”
“I know,” she replied. “I know it happens, I’ve felt it happening from the day she was born. I’ve been preparing myself for Willow leaving for a long time. But sometimes it just feels like she’s already gone, and I’m not ready yet.”
“Not ready for her to grow up, you mean?” Ira asked, head bowed with sympathy.
“I suppose that’s what it is,” his wife admitted, smiling a bit sheepishly.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be ready for that,” Ira confessed, and smiled broadly. “And, yes, I’m worried that she’s out so late. And, yes, I’m going to yell at her if I’m still awake when she comes home, because that’s what parents do. And she’s going to get defensive, because that’s what teenagers do. And you know what? I’m going to enjoy it, because even that’s something I’m going to miss.”
Mrs. Rosenberg laughed. “You know, Ira? You should have been a rabbi.”
“True. Very true.”
She laughed again, then slid off the arm into the chair with her husband, where they kept each other warm, and laughed together as they watched Dick Van Dyke in black and white, and thought about simpler days.
During the attack, Angel had gotten separated from Oz and Buffy. Oz, in his changed form, had matched the dark faerie in their savagery, routing them and running them down. He was not very worried about Oz. But Buffy. . .
He reminded himself that she was the Slayer, and she would want him to stay on the trail of the Hunt. It was most likely that she would too, and he would probably meet up with her somewhere soon. At least, that was what he kept telling himself.
Angel stood waist-high in clinging nettles and tangled undegrowth, nothing like a forest in southern California, inhaling a strange scent that reminded him all too well of the grave. This place was . . . touched, as they used to say in Galway. It was not right. Something had blanketed it with dark magics; something had come forth and possessed it.
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