Prophecies

by Christopher Golden

  “Or a brand,” Buffy said. “Like on cattle. To mark them as his.”

  Giles seemed to contemplate that for a moment, then held up his grandmother’s journal. “The one thing in the journal that reflects the Mayan legends is the idea that Camazotz was the prince of the Mayan legions of darkness, a leader among the creatures of the night. He is a formidable foe.”

  “That’s all we’ve got? Nothing on the lackeys?” Buffy asked, resignation in her voice. “Sparkly eyes, life-force sucking? Nothing?”

  “For the moment I’m afraid that’s it,” Giles said. “It’s possible the draining effect was the sorcery of that particular vampire, but time will tell. Buffy, why don’t you—”

  “I’ll patrol again tonight. See if I can’t finally hold on to one of these guys. With the brands on their faces, they’re hard to miss. I might swing by Willy’s and see if he’s got any information for us.”

  Buffy stood up, tossed her jacket over her shoulder again, and started for the door. While they’d been talking, she’d been relaxed and even joking around. But Willow saw the change come over her. Suddenly she was all business again, doing it all on her own.

  “Will, can you call Xander, ask him and Anya to come by. Giles can brief them. If Anya has any contacts among the demon set that she’s still willing to talk to, maybe she can make a few calls. Otherwise you guys should just be checking the paper, airline records, shipping manifests, trying to figure out how they got here and where they could all be staying. That’s a lotta new vampires at once. Bigger than a breadbox. My guess is Camazotz will have a Sunnydale version of his House of Bats somewhere. That’s something else to check. Where would we find bats around here?”

  As Buffy spoke, Willow’s eyes widened with alarm and awkwardness. “Um,” she countered. “Maybe Oz and I can just go by Xander’s. Giles has sort of done his part for the moment.”

  Buffy glanced up into the loft where Olivia had gone. “Right!” she said quickly. “Absolutely. All done with Giles, at least until the morning. We’ll do just fine. Really. We’ll check in tomorrow.”

  Giles busied himself with reorganizing the books on the table as Willow and Oz quickly followed Buffy out.

  In front of Giles’s apartment, they turned to face each other.

  “Sure you don’t need any backup on patrol?” Willow asked.

  Buffy shook her head. “I’ve got it. Besides, I’m just going to sweep the regular circuit and swing past the areas where I’ve seen them before, then I’m going to head back to the dorm early, try to work on that paper and not think about how badly I messed up my history exam.”

  Willow wanted to reach out to her, to help in some way, but Buffy had been like one big frayed nerve the last few days. Still, she had to try.

  “Hey. I know you’re hell-bent on handling everything yourself, but everybody needs help sometimes, right? Are you sure you don’t want us to round up a posse, go out and pinch-hit for you tonight so you can get that paper in? You could save yourself a whole letter grade. It isn’t like we haven’t done it before.”

  Buffy sighed with frustration. “I know that, all right? And it isn’t that I don’t appreciate it. But you shouldn’t have to. It isn’t your responsibility, it’s mine. I can’t keep leaning on you or anyone else. If I’m going to have a life beyond being the Slayer, I’ve got to do it myself, I’ve got to know that I can handle it.”

  Oz said nothing, only watched the two girls. Willow gazed imploringly at Buffy.

  “Your friends are part of this life you’re talking about having, Buffy.”

  Buffy’s mouth twitched and a grimace of hurt washed across her features. Then she sighed and her expression hardened.

  “You don’t understand, Will. But that’s okay, really. How can anyone?”

  With that, she turned and walked away. Willow stared after her best friend as she disappeared into the darkness, hoping Buffy would turn around, hoping she would see that she could not do it alone.

  Willow was about to call after her when Oz put a hand on her arm.

  “Let it go.”

  She gazed at him, not understanding.

  “It’s hard for her, trying to make it all work,” he said.

  Willow glanced down, trying and failing to hide her hurt. “It’s hard for all of us. Can’t she see that it isn’t just her? That nobody can deal with everything life throws them if they’re all alone?”

  “Give it some time. She’ll come around,” he promised. Then he slipped an arm around her and walked her to his van.

  As they drove over to Xander’s house, Willow stayed silent, holding her hurt close.

  CHAPTER 5

  “We got nothing.”

  With a frown, Giles looked up from the map of Sunnydale that was spread across his dining room table. Xander and Anya sat on the floor in the middle of his apartment with the previous week’s local newspapers arranged around them so expansively it appeared as though Giles had bought a puppy that was not yet housebroken.

  “Surely there must be something,” Giles said, disheartened at Xander’s declaration. “A downed plane. Strange stories from the border patrol. Violence at airport customs in Los Angeles. Something to give us just an inkling of where they might have made their lair locally.”

  Anya gestured with a hand to indicate the newspapers. “Nothing. The new mayor has issued more lies disguised as promises, as expected of the more talented politicians. The Coast Guard is fighting charges they didn’t act fast enough to clean up that oil spill last week. Nothing. Last night was boring and pointless. So is today.”

  “We’ve got bubkes,” Xander added.

  Anya, a former demon herself, and Xander’s girlfriend, glanced at him uncertainly. “Bubkes?”

  “Nada,” Xander told her. “Zilch. Zip. Zero. Squat. Diddly.” He shrugged. “Bubkes.”

  “Odd,” Anya told him. She shook her head ever so slightly, an expression of frustration with the confusing world around her that was almost as common as the disparaging tone she took with most everyone. “It sounds almost like a sexual act.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Giles muttered under his breath. The two of them did go on a bit about the more carnal aspects of their relationship.

  “You’re right,” Xander said thoughtfully. “I think it’s our job to invent that. Bubkes. We’ll be the first.”

  “Do you two mind?” Giles snapped. “What we’re dealing with here is quite serious. An infestation of new vampires led by an ancient demon-god. Lucy Hanover visits Buffy in a dream to warn her that something terrible is on the horizon just as she runs across this new group? I’m certain there’s a connection. I suggest you get serious about working with me to figure out where these new arrivals are secreting themselves, or simply take your . . . distractions with you and go elsewhere.”

  Anya grinned, an amiable expression on her face. “Excellent,” she said, climbing to her feet. “Let’s go, Xander. We’ve only made it halfway through the Kamasutra and there are dozens of—”

  Xander had the good sense to be somewhat embarrassed. “Um, Anya? That was sarcasm. Hard to tell with Giles, I know. But he needs help and was kidding about wanting us to leave.” Then Xander frowned and glanced at Giles. “Right?”

  “Not terribly certain of that myself,” Giles replied dryly. “But, yes, I could use all the help I can get. I don’t know why Buffy and Willow have not yet called me back.”

  “The Buffster’s got nothing or she would have called you this morning, don’t you think?” Xander said. “She went down to Willy’s Alibi Room, intimidated Willy. If she’d gotten anything from him she would have called.”

  Giles glanced across the room at his phone, then glared down at the map on the table as if it were purposely withholding information from him. In a way, he almost felt as though it were.

  “I suppose,” he allowed. “And if anything had happened to her, Willow would have informed us this morning.”

  “Or she might have, if she wasn’t so ticked off a
t Buffy,” Anya interjected.

  Both Xander and Giles looked at her with identical expressions of confusion.

  Anya only rolled her eyes. “Men. You never pay attention. I’d bet someone’s soul—not my own, of course—that Willow stayed at Oz’s last night and hasn’t spoken to Buffy at all today.”

  “Right,” Giles snapped. He pushed back his chair and gathered the map up in his hands. “Let’s head over there straightaway. If this Camazotz identified her as the Slayer, it’s quite possible that—”

  The phone rang.

  Giles hurried to pick it up. “Keep looking,” he told Xander and Anya. He interrupted the second ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, it’s me,” Buffy said. “Sorry I haven’t gotten back to you yet. I had classes and then library time.”

  “Yes, well, I admire your dedication to your class-work, Buffy, but Lucy Hanover’s warning was a bit ominous, wouldn’t you say? This situation with Camazotz requires our full focus.”

  “I’m on it,” she said coldly. “I will save the world, as usual, all right? But there’s also this thing called college that I have to do. Look, I know by now I’m not getting this paper done before Monday, so I won’t hit any more classes today. But give me some breathing room, Giles. I wasn’t the one with my girlfriend in town.”

  Startled as he was by her obvious anger and frustration, Giles hesitated. He wanted to defend himself, to argue that he had not shirked his duties at all while Olivia had been visiting, and in fact it had soured their visit somewhat. But he worried that, stressed as she was, Buffy might see that as an accusation.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, as gently as he could.

  “Peachy,” she replied, but her voice was cold.

  “Funny, you don’t sound at all peachy. Buffy, one of the first lessons taught to any Slayer is that in order to survive you must learn to adapt, to improvise, to react to any situation fluidly and quickly. In your admirable attempt to create an orderly life for yourself, I fear you may have forgotten that.”

  “That’s what I’m doing, Giles. Reacting. So I’m trying to create order out of the chaos that’s been my life since the day I found out I was the Slayer. Is that wrong?”

  He sighed. “You live your life in chaos, I’m afraid. In order to combat it, you immerse yourself in it. It’s one of the sacrifices you make in exchange for the gifts of the Slayer, the power to keep the rest of the world safe from that very same chaos.”

  There was a long pause before Buffy spoke again. “I don’t know if I can live like that anymore. If I give up trying to make sense out of things . . .”

  “Buffy, you know you have my full support in that effort. It’s simply that there are times—”

  “I know,” she replied sadly. “It’s fine. I’ll work it out. Moving on, now. I left my hand print on Willy’s throat last night, but he’s got nothing. Heard about the bat-faced vamps, but no word on who they are, why they’re here, and where they’re hanging their hats.”

  “Bubkes,” Giles muttered.

  On the other end of the line, Buffy paused. “You’ve been watching old reruns of Hill Street Blues again, haven’t you?”

  “You were moving on?” he reminded her.

  “I did a short patrol downtown, cemetery sweep, went by the Bronze. Fashion crimes notwithstanding, not a peep from anything soulless. Did a run through Docktown. Lot of tattoos, none of them bats.”

  As Giles listened to Buffy rattle off her actions of the night before, he stared at the map on the table and mentally traced the path of her patrol. It ended at Docktown, the section of Sunnydale used as a shipping port for a century. The Fish Tank, where she’d first run into the minions of Camazotz, was on the north side of Docktown, closest to the wharfs where vessels would be moored. The Kat Skratch Club was farther south and another block or two inland.

  Both were far from the center of town, which was usually teeming with young life, and almost always ended up the primary target of vampires in Sunny-dale. It was also much closer to the Hellmouth, which he believed drew them with almost magnetic power. Supernatural creatures in town did not generally stray far beyond its influence.

  Docktown. And to the west, nothing but Pacific Ocean.

  “Buffy,” Giles said, his voice laden with regret. “I’m an absolute fool.”

  “You tell me this now, after I’ve been taking your advice all this time?”

  “It’s got to be a ship,” he said. “The new House of Bats, the lair of Camazotz.” Giles glanced up at Xander and Anya, who had risen from the floor to come stand by the table and study the map with him. “It has to be a ship. Somehow they managed not to attract undue attention from customs and the harbormaster, even though they all have that brand on their faces.”

  “Makes sense,” Xander admitted. “But they’ve got to have someone with a human face doing their nasty bidding. You can’t make a whole ship invisible. There’s gotta be a record of it somewhere.”

  On the phone, Buffy echoed his words. “That would explain why I haven’t seen any of them in town. Yet. And even if you’re wrong, we’re no worse off than we have been. But how do we pinpoint them exactly? Breaking into every ship moored off Sunny-dale is gonna be risky from the getting-arrested perspective, and really time-consuming.”

  “It might be possible to find what we need through a computer search. Otherwise, I think I may have an idea for a magickal solution. Either way, you should call Willow.”

  “Why don’t I go down and talk to the harbormaster?” Buffy offered.

  “You could try that,” Giles admitted. “But he’d have no real reason to cooperate, and it would be inadvisable to try to intimidate anyone connected to the local authorities. We need to be prepared to search for them electronically, and mystically. For that, we need Willow.”

  * * *

  After Buffy hung up the phone, she stared at it for almost a full minute without moving. Giles wanted her to call Willow. There was no question in Buffy’s mind that Willow could help, but she disagreed with Giles that it was necessary. Even if it meant a little intimidation of the harbormaster, or the ship-to-ship search she knew she didn’t have time for, Buffy thought those would be better. Or, at least, a part of her did. The other part recognized that Willow and Giles were probably right. But she feared that possibility. If that were true, a little voice whispered in the back of her mind, then the day might come when she would have to choose between her life as Buffy Summers, and her obligations as the Slayer.

  Making that choice would tear her apart.

  Buffy wished that she had been more insistent with Giles, that she had told him that they should all just stay there and continue their research. Instead, she knew, she would have to do her best to keep them all safe, yet another responsibility on her shoulders. But she would handle it.

  She would.

  Reluctantly, she dialed Oz’s number.

  He picked up on the third ring. “Hey.”

  “It’s Buffy. Is Willow around?”

  “She went to pick up pizza.”

  A surprisingly powerful wave of relief swept through Buffy. Giles thought they needed Willow. Having her around would certainly make things easier. But being the Slayer wasn’t about making things easy. If Willow wasn’t around, maybe she would be able to send Giles home—tell him they would just try in the morning.

  Then she could look into it herself, in her own way. The hard way.

  “Buffy? Something going on?” Oz asked.

  “Could you ask her to do something for me?” she began. Then she explained to him about the computer search, the little bit of illegal hacking that Giles wanted her to do. It couldn’t hurt to have her do that, at least. Sitting at the keyboard was safe.

  “I’ll try to call later, see if she’s got anything.”

  “I’ll let her know,” Oz replied. “She’ll be glad.”

  His words carried more meaning, as always, but Buffy did not ask him to elaborate.

  * * * />
  Darkness had fallen by the time Buffy made it to Docktown. When she reached The Fish Tank she stood in the shadows of a crumbling apartment house a block or so away and scanned the street. Across from the sleazy bar, she spotted Giles’s ancient Citroën parked and dormant. Without the engine running, the thing looked almost abandoned. Though around here it wouldn’t have been abandoned for long without being stripped.

  Buffy knew better.

  As she approached the car she passed a narrow alley where a homeless man had built a lean-to against a brick wall out of weathered wood he’d probably torn off the poorly kept docks just down the street, or picked up from the rocky shore beneath them. He noticed her noticing him, and then hissed at something in the shadows behind him. A chill ran through Buffy as she wondered whether he communicated with a creature of real darkness, or something from his fevered imagination. She found that the latter possibility unnerved her more.

  Though she continued to move mostly in the shadows of buildings, Buffy picked up her pace. A moment later she stood behind the Citroën. Inside, in the dim light thrown from the guttering neon of The Fish Tank across the street, she could see Giles behind the wheel. He had a greasy brown paper sack of fried clams, French fries, and a can of soda. Not his usual cuisine, but she figured he had to pick something up in a rush. She couldn’t blame him. It took her a moment to realize she’d eaten nothing since breakfast, but even now she did not feel like eating. Her stomach felt small and tight as a fist, like it couldn’t have fit a single bite.

  Later, when it was over. Then she would eat.

  Buffy crouched down beside the car and rapped on Giles’s window. He started, dropped a fried clam, then cursed about the tartar sauce he’d gotten on his sweater.

  He motioned for her to come around the other side. Buffy slid into the passenger seat beside him while Giles tried to clean off his sweater. When he looked up, he was clearly mystified.