Prophecies

by Christopher Golden

  Buffy pushed her feet against the wall for leverage and then head-butted the vampire as hard as she could. Her aim was a little off and her skull crushed his nose with a splintering of bone and a spray of blood.

  “That bow,” she snarled, “was an antique. Giles is not going to be happy. He might even swear.”

  One of the others came at her from the left. Buffy ducked the blow, leaned back and snapped a kick at the vampire’s chest that staggered him.

  Another bat-face reached for her, but Buffy was too fast. She reached behind her and withdrew the stake from its sheath at the small of her back, then spun and punched it through his chest. The scarred one with the broken, mashed nose lunged at her through the cloud of his comrade’s dust. Buffy swung her right fist in a blow that came up from her gut and he went down hard on the floor.

  After that she moved in a single fluid motion. A spinning kick to the face of her remaining attacker was followed by a thrust of the stake, and more dust blew around the room. She dropped to the floor, stake above the scarred one’s heart, nose to nose with the vampire. His breath was wretched, the stench of old blood.

  Buffy dusted him.

  Instantly she was up, turning, body tense and ready for more, wanting combat and, with some luck, answers. She had figured to interrogate the last one alive. But she had not expected them to run away. The last of them, the two she had come to think of as Clownface and Bulldog, were gone, a distant rear door to the club hanging open to the night.

  Half a dozen wisecracks came to mind, but none made it as far as her lips. Vampires ran from her all the time, but this was different. There was no doubt in her mind that the two escapees had not run out of cowardice, but as some form of strategic retreat. The idea disturbed her profoundly. The vampire breed was a contentious one and they rarely got along well enough to form alliances, never mind packs or families. Only the most charismatic and powerful like the Master were able to gather followers in that way.

  Whoever this Camazotz was, he had trained his acolytes well.

  With those dark thoughts in mind, she pulled open the door to the club. Xander leaned against the wall to her left, staring at the two girls on the stage closest to them. It took him nearly ten seconds to notice Buffy standing there watching him.

  “Hey. Just on the job. Making sure you’re not disturbed,” he said nervously.

  “My hero.” Buffy raised an eyebrow.

  Xander balked. “You pushed me out of there. Closed the door in my face not once but twice. Kinda figured that meant I’d just be cannon fodder if I forced my way in. If you needed backup I thought you woulda yelled for me.”

  “I would have,” Buffy agreed. Then she smirked. “Whether or not you would have heard me is another question entirely.”

  “What?” Xander asked. His eyes strayed to the stage. “Oh, that? Barely noticed them. Just backing you up, Buffy. You will tell Anya it was you who dragged me in here, right?”

  Buffy made her way around tables and toward the front door of the Kat Skratch Club amidst clouds of cigarette smoke. None of the patrons even gave her a second glance.

  Xander trailed after her. “Buffy? You’ll tell her, right?”

  CHAPTER 4

  The dentist’s-drill buzz of the alarm clock woke Buffy at just after seven o’clock the following morning. One eye flickered open and she glared at it with as much hatred as she had ever felt for more corporeal demons. Just looking at the thing would not make it shut off, however, so she was forced to sit up, eyes slitted open, and click it off.

  “I hate Mondays,” she grumbled under her breath. Of course, it wasn’t Monday. But it felt like one.

  With a frown, Buffy looked around the room. Willow’s bed was still made, unrumpled. Her roommate had not come home the night before. It wasn’t unheard of for Willow to spend the night at Oz’s, but Buffy could not help but wonder if the brief argument they’d had the day before had anything to do with it. She was tempted to call Oz, but it was too early. Willow would likely be up already, but you could never tell with Oz. One day he might make all of his classes and the next he might sleep until after lunch.

  “No,” she told herself sternly. “No grumpy thoughts.”

  Determined to make a fresh start of the day, she got up and peered out the window. The sky was gray, overcast, but it was almost guaranteed to burn off. It was fall, sure, but it was also Southern California. Bad weather happened, but it was rare enough that nobody believed it until it did some damage, then afterward they pretended it had never been there. Almost exactly the same way the people of Sunnydale dealt with the supernatural.

  “No grumpy thoughts,” she said again.

  Humming a snatch of some tune the Dingoes always played at the Bronze, she got her things together and went down the hall to take a shower.

  Fifteen minutes later she was back in her room. Her mind drifted to the run-in at the Kat Skratch Club the night before. The tattoos, the vampires’ eerie chanting, their eyes, and their arrogance; much as she hated to admit it, even to herself, they creeped her out.

  Giles had promised to do research on Camazotz, and she knew he would get it done as soon as possible. But having Olivia around would complicate things. After the chaos of last night Buffy had been tempted to go back to his apartment and check in, but the idea of interrupting their romantic evening stopped her cold. The last thing she wanted to do was disturb Giles’s love life, never mind walk in on it.

  Shudder. That thought was creepier than bat-faced vampires.

  Buffy glanced at her enemy, the alarm clock. It was a little after seven-thirty, still plenty of time before class, and the desire to call Willow and square things if they needed to be squared lingered with her.

  Oz answered. “Yeah?” he rasped.

  “Hey, Oz. Sorry to call so early. Is Willow up?”

  “Hang on.”

  A muffled exchange on the other end, then Willow came on.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey. Sorry to bother you guys.”

  “No bother,” Willow said brightly. “At least, not me. But I’m not a cranky old bear in the morning like certain boyfriends. What’s up?”

  Buffy paused. It would sound silly if she brought up their argument, or just said she was checking in.

  “Buffy? You okay?”

  “Good,” Buffy replied quickly. “No grumpy mornings over here. Listen, there’s some interesting new talent in town and I was going to head over to Giles’s this afternoon, see what we could dig up. Want to come with?”

  “Mmm,” Willow replied, sounding a bit distracted. Buffy tried not to be envious that her best friend had a guy who loved her to be distracting. “Why don’t we meet you there?”

  “Deal. Gotta go, though. Time to make with the book learnin’. Got my history exam this morning. Then I’ve got to work on that paper for Professor Blaylock. As of today, I’m starting with a ninety.”

  “Knock ’em dead,” Willow said. “Only, y’know, not literally.”

  They said their good-byes and hung up, and when Buffy left the dorm room she had a broad smile on her face. Willow meant the world to her and Buffy had no idea what she would do if there ever came a day when Willow did not feel the same.

  * * *

  Oz sat cross-legged on the floor of Giles’s apartment, excavating ancient treasures from the man’s vinyl record collection. Olivia, a woman Willow had only met a time or two before, but who clearly meant a great deal to Giles, sat on a cushioned chair by Oz and exclaimed over a number of the records he pulled out, many of which spurred her to regale them with embarrassing stories of Giles in his younger days.

  She was certainly a beautiful woman, and her British accent gave her an added allure. Willow felt badly for having interrupted their time together.

  “Are you sure this is okay?” she said, keeping her voice low.

  Giles sat beside her at the dining room table as the two of them pored through a stack of arcane texts. A couple of them were even older than the most ant
ique volumes she had previously seen in his collection, and most were in Spanish.

  “Giles?” Willow prodded.

  He blinked several times, then looked up at her as though he’d just been snapped awake by a hypnotist. “I’m sorry, Willow, what was that? Have you found something?”

  “Not yet, no. I just . . . I know you and Olivia don’t get to see each other very often. She’s not in from London for very long. Are you sure you want to be doing this today?”

  Giles removed his glasses and offered her a gentle smile. “It’s very sweet of you to be concerned. The answer, of course, is no. I don’t want to be doing this at all. But I also realize that lives may be in jeopardy from these new arrivals, and a bit of research is the least I can do to help Buffy in her effort to combat them. She may have decided that she’s going to be invincible, but unless someone goes ’round and gets the rest of the world to agree, we must back her up.”

  He glanced over his shoulder as Olivia laughed about a particular record. Oz said something under his breath. Something ironic, Willow was sure, because he was Oz, after all.

  “Oz seems to have Olivia quite well entertained at the moment,” Giles reassured Willow. “Though how he manages to do that and maintain his usual twelve-word-an-hour rule is a mystery to me.”

  “He’s a good listener,” Willow said, a lopsided smile on her face as she watched her guy. When she smiled, the bruise Buffy had given her the previous morning made her wince. The glamour she’d used could hide it, but not make the pain go away.

  “So anything?” she asked Giles.

  “Quite a bit, actually.” He separated out two of the books from his pile. “I just thought I’d hold off until Buffy arrived to avoid having to explain it more than once.”

  Troubled, Willow wondered where Buffy had gotten off to. That morning she had asked that they all meet at Giles’s after classes were over. Willow knew for a fact that Buffy’s last class of the day was out before three o’clock. Now it was going on four and still no Buffy.

  “I expected her long before now,” Giles added.

  It only made Willow more concerned. “I hope she’s all—”

  She was interrupted by a knock at the door. Willow leaped up from the table to get it. Giles reached for a book he had set aside. Engrossed in the record collection, Oz and Olivia were about to put on an early Rolling Stones album, but they paused to look up.

  Willow opened the door to find Buffy standing on the stoop.

  “Hey!” Willow said. “You’re okay.”

  “Sorry I’m late. It’s just, this paper for Professor Blaylock. I thought I had a lot of this stuff down, but I feel like I’m starting from square one. No way am I going to finish before Monday, which is when it was due in the first place. I’ll be starting from a seventy. It’ll have to be perfect for me to pass. Then, this afternoon, I run into Aaron Levine, who’s in my history class? We got to talking about the exam this morning, which I thought I’d done all right on. Turns out, not so much. I mixed up a couple of royal families, so one of the big essays is written in the language of gibberish. I just don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  Willow frowned, then forced a smile. “Tell you what? You’ve got the stress. Maybe you’d feel better if you went back and worked on that paper. Let us deal with the mystery for a while. Then, when you feel like you’ve got a better handle on things—”

  “I’ve got a handle on things now,” Buffy snapped.

  Surprised by her anger, Willow took a step back. She glanced around the room and saw that everyone was staring at Buffy.

  “Except, perhaps, your temper,” Giles chided her.

  Buffy began to form some sort of retort, but then her features softened. She gazed apologetically at Willow.

  “Sorry, Will. Maybe I am wound a little tight right now, with all this. Thanks for worrying about me, but I really can handle it. I will handle it.”

  “Preferably without the crankiness,” Willow replied, still a bit hurt.

  Buffy put a hand on her shoulder. Willow saw the regret and the stress in her eyes, and wished she could do more to help.

  “Hey. Are we okay?” Buffy asked.

  “Peachy,” Willow said with a firm nod. “Without the pit, even.”

  “We’re in a place with fruit,” Buffy replied happily. “Gotta like it. As long as we go nowhere near lemons. There’s a whole sour element there.”

  “No lemons,” Willow promised.

  Giles rose from the table as Buffy approached.

  “Sorry for the lustus interruptus,” she said, casting a meaningful glance at Olivia, who smiled and waved without the faintest trace of embarrassment.

  And why should she be embarrassed, Willow thought. It’s her boyfriend’s apartment, they’re consenting adults, and we’re the intruders here. On the other hand, with their positions reversed Willow knew that she’d be blushing scarlet and barely able to speak beyond a babble.

  “Yes, well, ritual mass murder does tend to take priority over almost anything else,” Giles told her.

  Buffy cast a sidelong glance at Willow. “See, it’s the ‘mass’ in there that always gets me. I hate vampires with ambition. Why can’t they be ambition free?”

  In the corner, as he placed the needle on vinyl, Oz spoke without looking up from the antique record player. “Everyone’s gotta have a dream.”

  Giles cleared his throat. “Yes, well, your timing is impeccable as usual, Buffy. I believe we’ve found what we’re looking for.”

  “We were just waiting for you to get here,” Willow said helpfully. “Giles didn’t want to repeat himself.”

  “Sorry I held you guys up.”

  Giles held up a hand to wave away her apology. “No matter. Let’s get down to business, shall we?”

  Willow and Buffy sat together on the sofa. Oz left the Rolling Stones on with the volume low and wandered over. Olivia gazed at them for a moment, then rolled her eyes good-naturedly and went up the stairs into the loft.

  Giles gave them all a sheepish glance and shrugged. “Olivia’s a skeptic,” he told them in a stage whisper. “Thinks we’re all a bit mad, I suspect.”

  “She should spend more time in Sunnydale,” Buffy replied. “It’d make a believer out of her.”

  Oz settled deeply into an old chair. Giles stood before them, leaning only a little against the dining room table, cracked leather book in his right hand.

  “According to all the legends I’ve been able to find, Camazotz was not a vampire, but a god,” Giles began.

  “Ooh, pagan deities. Have we slain any of those yet?” Willow asked excitedly.

  Oz smiled down at her, touched the side of her face. “None of the big ones.”

  “Camazotz is not exactly a household name,” Buffy put in. “I’m guessing he’s not one of the big ones, either.”

  “On the contrary,” Giles countered. He opened the book in his hand and flipped to a page toward the end. The paper crackled as he turned the pages. When he held it up for them, Willow saw immediately what he meant for them to see. A drawing in the lower left corner of the page showed a hideous creature like a giant humanoid bat, with prickly fur and pointed ears, long tapered talons and leathery, veined wings. It had a dozen smaller limbs with their own talons protruding from its chest and a thick ratlike tail with what appeared to be a sharp spike at the end.

  “According to the ancient Mayans,” Giles continued, “Camazotz was the god of bats. He was wed to the dark goddess Zotzilaha Chimalman, and purportedly dwelt in an ancient, tomblike cave that led to a realm of darkness and death. Translated, the name of his lair was simply the House of Bats.”

  Buffy shifted on the couch. “So we’re thinking demon. Tunnel to realms of death sounds like a Hell-mouth to me.”

  “Or,” Willow put in quickly, “at least a Hell-nostril.”

  Everyone looked at her oddly.

  “Bad metaphor,” she muttered to herself. “Bad, icky metaphor.”

  Giles turned to slide the t
attered old book onto the dining room table. Then he picked up another, smaller volume that was obviously much more recent, though still quite old. When he opened it Willow could see that the text inside had been written by hand and she knew it must be one of the journals kept by the Watchers over the ages.

  “The Council let you keep those?” she asked, before she could stop herself.

  “Hmm?” Giles glanced up at her and frowned.

  Willow wished she had not brought it up. Giles had been fired from the Council because they had felt his relationship with Buffy had become too emotional, that he cared too much for her to be an effective Watcher. He had been angry with them and seemed more than content to cut off all contact, but Willow suspected it was still a sore spot. Still, she had brought it up.

  “The journal,” she said. “Kinda thought with, y’know, the divorce, that the Council would have asked for those back.”

  “Ah, yes. Well, Wesley did confiscate most of the handwritten ones I had. I was allowed to keep those that were not originals and this single volume. It was written by my grandmother, who was quite a storyteller, actually. She cataloged many of the odd vampire myths and legends she came across. I thought I remembered something about Mayans in here. If the stories she was told are true, Camazotz was the spawn of a union between a true demon, one of the first to walk the Earth, and a god. What ‘god’ means in these terms is really anyone’s guess, since no one has ever really been able to catalog a meeting with one, to my knowledge.

  “Suffice to say, Camazotz is a very ancient creature. Decidedly not a vampire, you understand, but my grandmother notes one particular theory that Camazotz was the demon responsible for the creation of vampires.”

  Buffy slid to the edge of the couch and stared at him. “Can that be true?”

  “We have no way of knowing,” Giles replied. “Nor have I been able to ascertain, thus far, why his vampire followers should have powers greater than their brethren.”

  “The god of bats. So the markings on their faces are what, his personal logo?”

  “It probably comes from that cave,” Willow suggested. “Okay, assuming dark and nasty lair really existed, not much of a stretch to think lots of bats there.” She nodded sagely. “I’m thinking maybe he believes his own hype. God of bats. Tattoos the lackeys.”