Buffy dragged him closer to the house, saying, “Better than radar.” The vampire cringed even more.
The house itself was completely dark, but for a single light coming from a small cellar window.
Giles looked back at the vampire—just as he had finished using his prosthetic to slice through the rope. “Look out!” he cried at the same time that Willow yelled, “Buffy!”
The vampire slashed at Buffy, who sensibly dodged out of the way. Unfortunately, the motion of the dodge caused her to trip and fall on the front lawn. The vampire advanced on Buffy, who crab-walked backward until she ran into the fence.
As Giles debated the wisdom of giving aid, Buffy grabbed a slat of the fence, broke it off in a smooth motion, and used it to stake the vampire.
As the vampire collapsed into dust, Buffy stood up, smiled, and said, “Coming?” Then she made for the house.
Minimal attention span, perhaps, the Watcher thought with pride, but the girl can think on her feet.
Then he heard the blood-curdling cry for help. . . .
CHAPTER 6
The big bug opened the door to the cage and motioned for Xander to come out.
Okay, this is the big moment. This is where you triumph over the forces of darkness and live to fight another day.
Keeping the purloined cage bar behind his back, he slowly inched feet-first out of the cage. “I’m comin’, I’m comin’,” he said.
As soon as he was close enough, he slugged the mantis with the bar, then leaped up and ran straight for the stairs.
I did it! I’m free! I’m gonna be all right—
A foreleg tripped him, and he came crashing to the stairs with a bone-jarring impact.
I didn’t do it. I’m caught. I’m gonna die.
The other foreleg grabbed him by the torso and Bug-Lady hefted him with disturbing ease. She carried him to a wall and secured him to it with leather straps. Just think, Xander thought bitterly, if someone told me yesterday that in twenty-four hours Ms. French would be tying me down with leather straps, I’d have been ecstatic.
“Oh yeah, here it comes,” Blayne said.
“What? What’s happening?” Xander asked frantically, even though he wasn’t one hundred percent sure he really wanted to know.
“How do you like your eggs, bro, over easy or sunny-side up?”
“Eggs? She’s gonna lay some—?”
Ms. French’s words in bio class several lifetimes ago came back to him: “The California mantis lays her eggs and then finds a mate to fertilize them.” Hanging from the wall were a bunch of eggs. They were probably the result of her night of passion with the poor schlub in the cage next to Blayne’s.
Xander wondered if it was his imagination, but the praying mantis seemed to be smiling. He didn’t think bugs could smile.
Then it leaned in closer and said in Natalie French’s voice, “Kiss me.”
Struggling futilely against his bonds, Xander said, “Can I just say one thing? Help! Heeeeeeeeelp!”
As if in response, the small window by the staircase that looked out over the front lawn shattered, and in climbed the most beautiful sight Xander had ever seen in his sixteen years of life:
Buffy.
“Hey, over here!” Blayne cried out. “Hello? In the cage?”
Showing tremendous good sense, Buffy ignored Blayne, instead yelling at the bug, “Let him go!” Buffy had her bag of tricks with her, and pulling out two cans of bug spray, hit the former Ms. French with both barrels.
The smell was terrible, but to Xander it was like roses. The giant bug retreated into a corner.
“Help me?” Blayne continued to wail. “Help me!”
Lay off, “bro,” you’re in your cage where it’s safe, Xander thought angrily.
“Get them out of here,” Buffy said, and only then did Xander realize that Willow and Giles had followed Buffy through the window. Willow went for the cage and tried to get it open while Giles undid the straps that held Xander.
Buffy then grabbed a handheld tape recorder, of all things, and held it aloft like it was a samurai sword. “Remember Dr. Gregory—you scarfed his head? Yeah, well, he taught me if you do your homework, you learn stuff. Like what happens to your nervous system when you hear this.”
She hit the play button.
Rupert Giles’s voice said, “—tremely important to file, not simply alphabetically—”
Xander blinked in confusion. I know what Giles lecturing does to my nervous system, but a mantis’s?
Buffy hit the stop button, crying, “Giles?”
“It’s the wrong side,” Giles called over.
Then the mantis screeched out of her corner and attacked Buffy, sending the recorder flying across the room and under a refrigerator. Giles went after it. Xander, for his part, went for the cans of bug spray.
Mantis Woman took a swipe at Buffy, which the Slayer leaped over.
The theme from “Mighty Mouse” sounding in his head, Xander then stepped in front of Buffy and hit the mantis with the bug spray.
It only mildly annoyed her this time, and she turned on him. Buffy shoved him rather violently out of the way.
Bug Lady then knocked Buffy down and moved in on her. Buffy got three kicks in, which gave the Slayer a chance to get up.
Then Giles dove in from the back with the recorder in his hand and pushed play.
Xander winced as it played an ear-screeching, high-pitched sound. What is that?
The mantis was gyrating around and screeching as if in agony.
As if answering his thought, Buffy said, “Bat sonar makes your whole nervous system go to hell.”
She reached into her bag and hefted a giant machete. “You can go there with it.”
This time she really did look like a samurai warrior. Xander watched with a combination of revulsion and joy as Buffy took the machete and starting hacking and slashing the giant mantis.
In less than a minute, the floor was covered with mantis chunks.
Standing, brushing himself off, and pocketing the tape recorder, Giles said, “I’d say it’s deceased.”
“And dissected,” Willow added. Xander saw that she had successfully gotten Blayne out of the cage.
Xander asked Buffy, “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
Preparing himself for a five-course meal of crow, Xander said, “Just for the record, you were right, I’m an idiot, and God bless you.”
Buffy smiled a no-hard-feelings smile, for which Xander was grateful.
Turning to Giles and Willow, Xander said, “And thank you guys, too.”
“Yeah, really,” Blayne said. He sounded a bit more together than he had in the cage.
“Pleasure,” Giles said.
“I’m really glad you’re okay,” Willow said to Xander, moving next to him. “It’s so unfair how she only went after virgins.”
Xander blinked. “What?”
“I mean, here you guys are, doing the right thing—the smart thing—when a lot of other boys your age—”
Blayne straightened up and interrupted. “Flag down on that play, babe. I am not—”
Giles smiled and said, “That’s the She-Mantis’s modus operandi—she only preys on the pure.”
Pure. Now I’m “the pure.” Whoopee. Aloud, Xander said, “Well, isn’t this a perfect ending to a wonderful day?”
Blayne pointed at each of them in turn. “My dad’s a lawyer. Anybody repeats this to anybody, they’re gonna find themselves facing a lawsuit.”
For what, definition of character? Xander thought. “Blayne,” he said, “shut up.”
“I don’t think it’s bad,” Willow said with a smile. “I think it’s really—”
Xander bent down to the floor where Buffy had dropped the machete and picked it up.
“Sweet,” Willow said quickly, eyes widening at the sight of the blade. “Certainly nothing I’ll ever bring up again.”
Xander smiled, then went over to where the egg sacs hung.
Met
hodically, like a boxer with a punching bag, he hacked and sliced the egg sacs to ribbons.
It was the most enjoyable thing he’d done in weeks.
Angel didn’t make a noise when he appeared next to Buffy in the Bronze. Then again, her mind had been drifting, and the music was especially loud tonight. But still, he did seem to come out of nowhere. That really is an annoying habit, she decided.
She was also suddenly very self-conscious of the fact that she was wearing his jacket.
“I heard a rumor there was one less vampire walking around making a nuisance of himself,” he said.
“There is. I guess I should thank you for the tip.”
He gave her that half-smile of his and said, “Pleasure’s mine.”
“Of course, it would make things easier if I knew how to get in touch with you—”
“I’ll be around.”
“Or who you were.”
This time he gave her the full smile. Part of her desperately wanted to clock him one in the jaw. Another part of her equally desperately wanted to drown in that smile.
“Well anyway,” she said after a moment, starting to take the jacket off, “you can have your jacket back.”
He held up a hand to stop her. “Looks better on you.” And then he ran his hand along the collar for a moment.
It suddenly got very warm in the Bronze.
Angel then walked off. Buffy looked after him, long after he had disappeared from sight.
“Oh boy.”
Principal Flutie had found a new biology teacher to take Dr. Gregory’s place. He was taller than his predecessor, with less hair, and he had all the physical presence of a dead plant. Buffy hadn’t really appreciated Dr. Gregory’s lecturing skills until she had to listen to this guy—whose name she couldn’t even remember—drone on.
“All midterm papers will be exactly six pages long. No more. No less. One-third of your grade will be dependent on those papers. No more. No less.”
His tone doesn’t change, she thought with horror at the coming doldrums of the rest of the term. She had just started to get into bio, but she suspected that this teacher would drain that interest right out of her.
She looked over at the table next to her. Xander was trying hard to pay attention and failing miserably. Buffy figured that was residual guilt combined with a desire never to be taken in by a giant praying mantis again. Willow, on the other hand, looked like she was fighting to keep her eyes open.
Classic danger sign, she thought. If the teacher’s even boring Will, he must be a loser.
Several ice ages later, the bell rang. Buffy got up to leave, but something caught her eye on one of the small tables.
Dr. Gregory’s cracked reading glasses, right where she’d left them.
“And please don’t listen to the principal or anyone else’s negative opinion about you. Let’s make them eat that permanent record. What do you say?”
I’ll do my best, she promised.
With that, she put the glasses away in the closet and went on to her next class.
TONIGHT, PART 2
Xander Harris had had very few nightmares in his life. Once, toward the end of sophomore year, he’d been given an opportunity to confront one of them: the clown who had provided the “entertainment” for Xander’s sixth birthday party.
But one that he doubted would ever leave him was the giant head of a praying mantis leaning in to prepare for a fun-filled evening of mating and decapitation.
He went downstairs for a drink of water. Just thinking about “Ms. French” made his mouth go dry. Of course, he thought as he poured from the plastic pitcher his mother kept in the fridge, some guys might go for something stronger. But since his primary experience with alcohol involved that selfsame praying mantis, Xander suspected he was going through life as a teetotaler.
Or, at the very least, avoiding martinis like the plague.
As he went back up to his room, he thought about what happened after Ms. French. First Angel revealed himself to be a vampire—but one cursed with a soul, making him a good guy. Sort of. Apparently he ran afoul of a Romany tribe a hundred years back, and this was how the Gypsies punished him. For Xander’s part, the idea of cursing someone with goodness struck him as a little wiggy.
So did what happened with Buffy and Angel. She fell head over heels for him, and he fell right back. Even leaving aside Xander’s own strong feelings for her, he felt that was just plain wrong. Angel was still a vampire; Buffy was still the Slayer. The only relationship should have been between her stake and his heart. But the lovebirds didn’t see it that way. And Xander had to admit that Angel had proven useful against the Master and his henchvamps.
Then came the prophecy. “The Master shall rise and the Slayer shall die.”
At first Buffy was understandably resistant to this concept, but eventually she sucked it up and faced the Master. Xander, for his part, saw no reason to let her do it alone. Conscripting Angel to help him, he followed her to the church where the Master was imprisoned—
Too late. When they arrived, the Master was free and Buffy lay face down in a pond, not breathing. Xander refused to accept that she was dead, and gave her mouth-to-mouth and CPR learned at a barely remembered first-aid class at a long-ago summer camp.
But it worked. Buffy coughed and breathed and lived. And then she killed the Master.
At first, things seemed to calm down. Even Cordelia—who had been present for the Master’s demise and therefore was now privy to the fact vampires did exist and she was living on the Mouth of Hell—was becoming almost tolerable.
Things, however, never stayed calm on the Hellmouth.
First some vampires tried to resurrect the Master. Then Spike and Drusilla showed up to wreak their little brand of havoc. Then Ampata arrived.
Xander opened his closet door and looked at himself in the mirror on the back of the closet door.
My clothes are fine. They do make a statement. That statement is, “This is me.” And, let’s face it, an untucked flannel shirt over an equally untucked T-shirt is me.
Certainly Ampata didn’t have any problem with it.
Inside the closet, he noticed the cowboy hat that had been part of the costume he wore for a cultural exchange dance at the Bronze.
Ampata had been his date.
INCA MUMMY GIRL
EARLY JUNIOR YEAR
CHAPTER 1
The good news for Xander was that it was Cultural Exchange Week in Sunnydale. This annual event, instituted by the high school and the City Council several years before, brought foreign students to live in Sunnydale and experience the U.S. of A. firsthand, and also was intended to heighten awareness of other cultures among the American students.
In truth, the event lasted two weeks, but, as Xander pointed out when he and Willow were telling Buffy about it in the library days earlier, “Cultural Exchange Two-Week Period” lacked the proper zing. When Giles said that they could have called it the Cultural Exchange Fortnight, the three teenagers looked at him funny until he went into another room.
Xander loved this event, because it meant that classes were more or less suspended while the great melting pot congratulated itself on how diverse it was for two weeks.
The bad news was that part of the event this year involved a field trip to the Sunnydale Natural History Museum and its Treasures of South America exhibit, a touring show whose arrival at the museum was carefully timed to coincide with Cultural Exchange Week.
Xander used to love field trips, but the last one he went on, to the local zoo, resulted in Xander and four other students being possessed by the spirit of a hyena. The five of them ate a pig whole, and—minus Xander—did likewise for Principal Flutie. As a result, Xander had formed the opinion that field trips were a generally bad idea when one lived on a Hellmouth.
Flutie’s somewhat authoritarian replacement, Principal Snyder, didn’t go for field trips. It was one of the few things about Snyder that Xander did like. This trip, however, was apparently
the exception.
“It’s so unfair,” Buffy was saying as they approached the large staircase that would bring them into the museum. During the entire bus ride over, she had been complaining because her mother had agreed to house one of the foreign students. Xander had himself been relieved of that option. His parents had expressed a complete lack of interest in, as his father put it, “playing hotel for free for someone who no speaka da language.”
“I don’t think it’s that bad,” Willow said.
“It’s the uber-suck. Mom could have at least warned me.”
Xander said, “Well, a lot of the parents are doing it this year. It’s part of this whole cultural exchange megillah: the exhibit, the dance—”
“I have the best costume for the dance,” Willow said in an obvious attempt to change the subject.
Buffy, however, didn’t take the bait. “A complete stranger in my house for two weeks. I’m gonna be insane. A danger to myself and others within three days, I swear.”
“I think the exchange student program is cool,” Xander said with all the assurance of someone who didn’t have to share his house. When the girls both shot him looks, he added, “I do. It’s a beautiful melding of two cultures.”
“Have you ever done an exchange program?” Buffy asked.
Xander pretended to consider the question. “My dad tried to sell me to some Armenians once, does that count?”
That, at last, got a smile out of Buffy.
The three of them entered the main hall. Said hall had a dinosaur exhibit. Why is it, Xander wondered, that main halls of natural history museums always have dinosaurs?
Cordelia was standing by a particularly menacing-looking skeleton, looking over a series of yearbook-style pictures with some of her Cordettes. As Xander, Willow, and Buffy approached, Cordy pointed at one shot and said, “There’s mine. Sven. Isn’t he lunchable? Mine’s definitely the best.”
Of course, Xander thought. Her royal heinie has to have the best of everything.
Buffy walked up to Cordelia and asked, “What are you looking at?”
That, in and of itself, was amazing. A few months ago, Cordy wouldn’t have given Buffy the time of day and Buffy would never have asked her for it. But the Slayer had saved Cordelia’s life twice, once from a girl who had turned invisible and was terrorizing Cordy and her friends, once from a couple of loony students who wanted to use her head for the Bride of Frankenstein. That, Xander supposed, could thaw even the iciest of relationships. No one would ever accuse them of being friends, but at least they had become civil.
THE XANDER YEARS, Vol. 1 Page 6
